The chimney-corner

S. G. and E. L. ELBERT

pl^SintlfiV hx) _ EUA SKITH JIJEST._ • 88

Jilt illfmm*i<iuti

^^KATHARIM

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TICKNOR AND FIELDS, Publishers.

THE

HIMNEY-CORNER.

BY

i

CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD,-

AtrTHOR OF "house AND HOME PAPERS*' AND "LITTLE FOXES."

BOSTON:
TICK NOR AND FIELDS.
1868.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

University Press: Welch, Bigelow, Sc Co.,
* Cambridge.

t

CONTENTS.

PAGE

I, What will You do with Her ? or, The Wo-
man Question , . . . , i
II. Woman's Sphere 27

III. A Family-Talk on Reconstruction . . 63

IV. Is Woman a Worker? 100

V. The Transition . . , . . ... 123

VI. Bodily Religion : A Sermon on Good Health 142

VII. How shall we entertain our Company . 166

VIII. How shall we be amused .J* .... 187

IX. Dress, or who makes the Fashions . . 205

X. What are the Sources of Beauty in Dress 235

XI. The Cathedral 259

XII. The New Year ...... 278

XIII. The Noble Army of Martyrs. . . . 297

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.

I.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH HER? OR,
THE WOMAN QUESTION.

" T T 7 ELL, what will you do^with her?" said I to
V V my wife.

My wife had just come down from an interview
with a pale, faded-looking young woman in rusty black
attire, who had called upon me on the very common
supposition that I was an editor of the "Atlantic
Monthly."

. By the by, this is a mistake that brings me, Chris-
topher Crowfield, many letters that do not belong to
me, and which might with equal pertinency be ad-
dressed, To the Man in the Moon." Yet these let-
ters often make my heart ache, — they speak so of
people who strive and sorrow and want help ; and it
is hard to be called on in plaintive tones for help
which you know it is perfectly impossible for you ij
give.

For instance, you get a letter in a delicate hand,

I A

2

The Chimney-Corncr.

setting forth the old distress, — she is poor, and she
has looking to her for support those that are poorer
and more helpless than herself: she has tried sewing,
but can make little at it ; tried teaching, but caunot
now get a school, — all places being filled, and more
than filled ; at last has tried literature, and written
some Httle things, of which she sends you a modest
specimen, and wants your opinion whether she can
gain her living by writing. You run over the articles,
and perceive at a glance that there is no kind of hope
or use in her trying to do anything at literature ; and
then you ask yourself, mentally, " What is to be done
with her ? What can she do ?

Such v/as the application that had come to me this
morning, — only, instead of by note, it came, as I
have said, in the person of the applicant, a thin, deli-
cate, consumptive-looking being, v/earing that rusty
mourning which speaks sadly at once of heart-bereave-
ment and material poverty.

My usual course is to turn such cases over to Mrs.
♦ Crowfield ; and it is to be confessed that this worthy
woman spends a large portion of her time, and wears
out an extraordinary amount of shoe-lealher, in per-
forming the duties of a self-constituted intelligence-
office.

Talk of giving money to the poor! what is that,
compared to giving sympathy, thought, time, taking

What will Vou do with Her? 3

their burdens upon you, sharing their perplexities ?
They who are able to buy off every application at the
door of their heart with a five or ten dollar bill are
those who free themselves at least expense.

My wife had communicated to our friend, in the
gentlest tones and in the blandest manner, that her
poor little pieces, however interesting to her own
household circle, had nothing in them wherewith to
enable her to make her way in the thronged and
crowded thoroughfare of letters, — that they had no
more strength or adaptation to win bread for her than
a broken-winged butterfly to draw a plough ; and it
took some resolution in the background of her ten-
derness to make the poor applica:nt entirely certain
of this. In cases like this, absolute certainty is the
very greatest, the only true kindness.

It was grievous, my wife said, to see the discouraged
shade which passed over her thin, tremulous features,
when this certainty forced itself upon her. It is hard,
when sinking in the waves, to see the frail bush at
which the hand clutches uprooted ; hard, when alone
in the crowded thoroughfare of travel, to have one's
last bank-note declared a counterfeit. I knew I
should not be able to see her face, under the shade of
this disappointment ; and so, coward that I was, I
turned this trouble, where I have turned so many
others, upon my wife.

4

The Chimney-Corner.

" Well, what shall we do with her ? said I.
" I really don't know," said my wife, musingly.
^' Do you think we could get that school in Taunton
for her ? "

" Impossible ; Mr. Herbert told me he had already
twelve applicants for it."

" Could n't you get her plain sewing ? Is she handy
with her needle ? "

" She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her
side, and cough ; and the doctor has told her it will
not do for her to confine herself."

" How is her handwriting ? Does she write a good
hand?"

" Only passable."

" Because," said I, " I was thinking if I could get
Steele and Simpson to give her law-papers to copy."

" They have more copyists than they need now ;
and, in fact, this woman does not write the sort of
hand at all that would enable her to get on as a
copyist.'^

"Well," said I, turning uneasily in my chair, and at
last hitting on a bright masculine expedient, " I '11 tell
you what must be done. She must get married."

" My dear," said my wife, " marrying for a living is
the very hardest way a woman can take to get it.
Even marrying for love often turns out badly enough.
Witness poor Jane."

What will Vou do with Her? 5

Jane was one of the large number of people whom
it seemed my wife's fortune to carry through life on
her back. She was a pretty, smiling, pleasing daugh-
ter of Erin, who had been in our family originally as
nursery-maid. I had been greatly pleased in watching
a little idyllic affair growing up 'between her and a
joyous, good-natured young Irishman, to whom at last
we married her. Mike soon after, however, took to
drinking and unsteady courses ; and the result has
been to Jane only a yearly baby, with poor health,
and no money.

" In fact," said my wife, " if Jane had only kept sin-
gle, she could have made her own way well enough,
and might have now been in good health and had a
pretty sum in the savings bank. As it is, I must carry
not only her, but her three children, on my back."

"You ought to drop her, my dear. You really
ought not to burden yourself with other people's af-
fairs as you do," said I, inconsistently.

" How can I drop her ? Can I help knowing that
she is poor and suffering ? And if I drop her, who
will take her up ? ''

Now there is a way of getting rid of cases of this
kind, spoken of in a quaint old book, which occurred
strongly to me at this moment : —

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of
daily food, and one of you say unto them, ^ Depart in

6

The Chhnney-CorneK

peace, be ye warmed and filled/ notwithstanding ye
give them not those things which are needful to the
body, what doth it profit ? "

I must confess, notwithstanding the strong point of
the closing question, I I'ooked with an evil eye of long-
ing on this very easy way of disposing of such cases.
A few sympatjiizing words, a few expressions of hope
that I did not feel, a line written to turn the case into
somebody else's hands, — any expedient, in fact, to
hide the longing eyes and imploring hands from my
sight, was what my carnal nature at this moment
greatly craved.

"Besides," said my wife, resuming the thread of
her thoughts in regard to the subject just now before
us, as to marriage, it 's out of the question at
present for this poor child ; for the man she loved
and would have married lies low in one of the graves
before Richmond. It 's a sad story, — one of a thou-
sand like it. She brightened for a few moments, and
looked almost handsome, when she spoke of his
bravery and goodness. Her father and lover have
both died in this v/ar. Her only brother has returned
from it a broken-down cripple, and she has him and
her poor old mother to care for, and so she seeks
work. I told her to come again to-morrow, and I
v/ould look about for her a little to-day."

"Let me see, how many are now down on your

IVhai will Vou do with Her? 7

list to be looked about for, Mrs. Crowfield? — some
twelve or thirteen, are there not ? You 've got Tom's
sister disposed of finally, I hope, — that 's a com-
fort! "

" Well, J 'm sorry to say she came back on my hands
yesterday," said my wife, patiently. " She is a foolish
young thing, and said she did n't like living out in the
country. I 'm sorry, because the Morrises are an
excellent family, and she might have had a life-home
there, if she had only been steady, and chosen to
behave herself properly. But yesterday I found her
back on her mother's hands again ; and the poor
woman told me that the dear child never could bear
to be separated from her, and that she had n't the
heart to send her back.'^

" And in short," said I, she gave you notice that
you must provide for Miss O'Connor in some more
agreeable way. Cross that name off your list, at any
rate. That woman and girl need a few^ hard raps in
the school of experience before you can do anything
for them."

" I think I shall," said my long-suffering wafe ; " but
it 's a pity to see a young thing put in the direct road
to ruin."

" It is one of the inevitables," said I, and we
must save our strength for those that are willing to
help themselves."

8

The Chimney-Corner,

" What all this talk about ? " said Bob, coming in
upon us rather brusquely.

" O, as usual, the old question," said I, — " ' What 's
to be done with her ? ' "

"Well,'' said Bob, "it"'s exactly what I've come to
talk w^ith mother about. Since she keeps a distressed-
women's agency-office, I 've come to consult her about
Marianne. That woman will die before sbc months
are out, a victim to high civilization and the Paddies.
There we are, twelve miles out from Boston, in a
country villa so convenient that every part of it might
almost do its ovm work, — everything arranged in the
most convenient, contiguous, self-adjusting, self-acting,
patent-right, perfective manner, — and yet, I tell you,
Marianne will die of that house. It will yet be re-
corded on her tombstone, ^ Died of conveniences.'
For myself, what I languish for is a log cabin, with a
bed in one corner, a trundle-bed underneath for the
children, a fxreplace only six feet off, a table, four
chairs, one kettle, a coffee-pot, and a tin baker, — that's
all. I lived deliciously in an establishment of this kind
last summer, when I was up at Lake Superior ; and I
am convinced, if I could move Marianne into it at
once, that she would become a healthy and a happy
woman. Her life is smothered out of her with com-
forts j we have too many rooms, too many carpets, too
many vases and knick-knacks, too much china and sil-

What will You do with Her? 9

ver ; she has too many laces and dresses and bonnets ;
the children all have too many clothes ; — in fact, to
put it scripturally, our riches are corrupted, our gar-
ments are moth-eaten, our gold and our silver is can-
kered,— and, in short, Marianne is sick in bed, and I
have come to the agency-office-for-,distressed-women to
take you out to attend to her.

" The fact is,'' continued Bob, " that since our cook
married, and Alice went to California, there seems to
be no possibility of putting our domestic cabinet upon
any permanent basis. The number of female persons
that have been through our house, and the ravages
they have wrought on it for the last six months, pass
belief. I had yesterday a bill of sixty dollars' plumb-
ing to pay for damages of various kinds which had had
to be repaired in our very convenient water-works ; and
the blame of each particular one had been bandied like
a shuttlecock among our three household divinities.
Biddy privately assured my wife that Kate was in the
habit of emptying dust-pans of rubbish into the main
drain from the chambers, and washing any little extra
bits down through the bowls ; and, in fact, when one
of the bathing-room bowls had overflowed so as to
damage the frescoes below, my wife, with great delicacy
and precaution, interrogated Kate as to whether she
had followed her instructions in the care of the water-
pipes. Of course she prot€sted the most immaculate
1*

10

TJie Chimney-corner,

care and circumspection. ' Sure, and she knew how
careful one ought to be, and was n't of the hkes of
thim as would n't mind what throuble they made, —
like Biddy, who would throw trash and hair in the
pipes, and niver listen to her tellin' ; sure, and had n't
she broken the pipes in the kitchen, and lost the stop-
pers, as it was a shame to see in a Christian house ? '
Ann, the third girl, being privately questioned, blamed
Biddy on Monday, and Kate on Tuesday ; oh Wednes-
day, however, she exonerated both ; but on Thursday,
being in a high quarrel with both, she departed, accusing
them severally, not only of all the evil practices afore-
said, but of lying, and stealing, and all other miscella-
neous wickednesses that came to hand. Whereat the
two thus accused rushed in, bewailing themselves and
cursing Ann in alternate strophes, averring that she had
given the baby laudanum, and, taking it out riding, had
stopped for hours with it in a filthy lane, where the
scarlet fever was said to be rife, — in short, made so
fearful a picture, that Marianne gave up the child's life
at once, and has taken to her bed. I have endeavored
all I could to quiet her, by telling her that the scarlet-
fever story was probably an extemporaneous work of
fiction, got up to gratify the Hibernian anger at Ann ;
and that it was n't in the least worth while to believe
one thing more than another from the fact that any of
the tribe said it. But she refuses to be comforted, and

What zvill Vou do zvith Herf i t

is so Utopian as to lie there, crying, * O, if I only
could get one that I could trust, — one that really would
speak the truth to me, — one that I might know really
went where she said she went, and really did as she
said she did ! ' To have to live so, she says, and bring
up little children with those she c^n't trust out of her
sight, whose word is good for nothing, — to feel that her
beautiful house and her lovely things are all going to
rack and ruin, and she can^t take care of them, and
can't see where or when or how the mischief is done, —
in short, the poor child talks as women do who are
violently attacked with housekeeping fever tending to
congestion of the brain. She actually yesterday told
me that she wished, on the whole, she never had got
married, which I take to be the most positive indica-
tion of mental alienation."

Here,'^ said I, " we behold at this moment two
women dying for the want of what they can mutually
give one another, — . each having a supply of what the
other needs, but held back by certain invisible cob-
webs, slight but strong, from coming to each other's
assistance. Marianne has money enough, but she
wants a helper in her family, such as all her money
has been hitherto unable to buy ; and here, close at
hand, is a woman who wants home-shelter, healthy, va-
ried, active, cheerful labor, with nourishing food, kind
care, and good wages. What hinders these women

12

The Chimney-ComeK

from rushing to the help of one another, just as two
drops of water on a leaf rush together and make one ?
Nothing but a miserable prejudice, — but a prejudice
so strong that women will starve in any other mode of
life, rather than accept competency and comfort in
this."

" You don't mean," said my wife, to propose that
our protegee should go to Marianne as a servant ? "

" I do say it would be the best thing for her to do,
— the only opening that I see, and a very good one, too,
it is. Just look at it. Her bare living at this moment
cannot cost her less than five or six dollars a week, —
everything at the present time is so very dear in the
city. Now by what possible calling open to her ca-
pacity can she pay her board and washing, fuel and
lights, and clear a hundred and some odd dollars a
year ? She could not do it as a district school-teacher ;
she certainly cannot, \vith her feeble health, do it by
plain sewing ; she could not do it as a copyist. A ro-
bust woman might go into a factory, and earn more ;
but factory work is unintermitted, twelve hours daily,
week in and out, in the same movement, in close air,
amid the clatter of machinery ; and a person delicately
organized soon sinks under it. It takes a stolid, en-
during temperament to bear factory labor. Now look
at Marianne's house and family, and see what is in-
sured to your protegee there.

W/iai will Yoii do zvith Her? 13

" In the first place, a home, — a neat, quiet cham-
ber, quite as good as she has probably been accus-
tomed to, — the very best of food, served in a pleasant,
light, airy kitchen, which is one of the most agreeable
rooms in the house, and the table and table-service
quite equal to those of most farmers and mechanics.
Then her daily tasks would be light and varied, —
some sweeping, some dusting, the washing and dress-
ing of children, the care of their rooms and the nur-
sery, — all of it the most healthful, the most natural
work of a woman, — work alternating with rest, and
diverting thought from painful subjects by its variety,
— and what is more, a kind of work in which a good
Christian woman might have satisfaction, as feeling
herself useful in the highest and best way ; for the
child's nurse, if she be a pious, well-educated woman,
may make the whole course of nursery-life an educa-
tion in goodness. Then, what is far different from
many other modes of gaining a livelihood, a woman in
this capacity can make and feel herself really and
truly beloved. The hearts of little children are easily
gained, and their love is real and warm, and no true
woman can become the object of it without feeling
her own life made brighter. Again, she would have
in Marianne a sincere, warm - hearted friend, who
would care for her tenderly, respect her sorrows, shel-
ter her feelings, be considerate of her wants, and in

14

The Chimney-Corner,

every way aid her in the cause she has most at heart,
— the succor of her family. There are many ways
besides her wages in which she would infallibly be
assisted by Marianne, so that the probability would be
that she could send her- little salary almost untouched
to those for whose support she was toiling, — all this
on her part."

"But," added my wife, "on the other hand, she
would be obliged to associate and be ranked with
common Irish servants."

" Well," I answered, " is there any occupation, by
which any of us gain our living, which has not its dis-
agreeable side ? Does not the lawyer spend all his
days either in a dusty office or in the foul air of a
court-room ? Is he not brought into much disagree-
able contact with the lowest class of society ? Are
not his labors dry and hard and exhausting? Does
not the blacksmith spend half his life in soot and
grime, that he may gain a competence for the other
half? If this woman were to work in a factory, would
she not often be brought into associations distasteful
to her ? Might it not be the same in any of the arts
and trades in which a living is to be got? There
must be unpleasant circumstances about earning a liv-
ing in any way ; only I maintain that those which a
woman would be likely to meet with as a servant in a
refined, well-bred, Christian family would be less than

What will Vou do with Her? 15

in almost any other calling. Are there no trials to a
woman, I beg to know, in teaching a district school,
where all the boys, big and little, of a neighborhood
congregate? For my part, were it my daughter or
sister who was in necessitous circumstances, I would
choose for- her a position such as I name, in a kind,
intelligent. Christian family, before many of those to
which women do devote themselves/'

" Well," said Bob, all this has a good sound
enough, but it 's quite impossible. It 's true, I verily
believe, that such a kind of servant in our family
would really prolong Marianne's life years, — that it
would improve her health, and be an unspeakable
blessing to her, to me, and the children, — and I
would almost go down on my knees to a really well-
educated, good, American woman who would come
into our family, and take that place ; but I know it's
perfectly vain and useless to expect it. You know
we have tried the experiment two or three times of
having a person in our family who should be on the
footing of a friend, yet do the duties of a servant, and
that we never could make it work well. These half-
and-half people are so sensitive, so exacting in their
demands, so hard to please, that we have come to the
firm determination that we will have no sliding-scale
in our family, and that whoever we are to depend on
must come with bona-fide willingness to take the posi-

16

TJie Chimney-Comer,

tion of a servant, such as that position is in our house ;
and that^ I suppose, your protegee would never do,
even if she could thereby live easier, have less hard
work, better health, and quite as much money as she
could earn in any other-way."

" She would consider it a personal degradation, I
suppose," said my wife.

" And yet, if she only knew it," said Bob, " I should
respect her far more profoundly for her willingness to
take that position, when adverse fortune has shut
other doors."

" Well, now," said I, " this woman is, as I under-
stand, the daughter of a respectable stone-mason ;
and the domestic habits of her early life have prob-
ably been economical and simple. Like most of our
mechanics' daughters, she has received in one of our
high schools an education which has cultivated and
developed her mind far beyond those of her parents
and the associates of her childhood. This is a com-
mon fact in our American life. By our high schools
the daughters of plain workingmen ar^ raised to a
state of intellectual culture which seems to make the
disposition of them in any kind of industrial calling a
difficult one. They all want to teach school, — and
school-teaching, consequently, is an overcrowded pro-
fession, — and, failing that, there is only millinery and
dressmaking. Of late, it is true, efforts have been

What will Yoti do with Her? 17

made in various directions to widen their sphere.
Type-setting and book-keeping are in some instances
beginning to be open to them.

All this time there is lying, .neglected and de-
spised, a calling to which womanly talents and in-
stincts are peculiarly fitted, — a calling full of oppor-
tunities of the most lasting usefulness, — a calling
which insures a settled home, respectable protection,
healthful exercise, good air, good food, and good
wages, — a calling in which a woman may make real
friends, and secure to herself warm affection ; and yet
this calling is the one always refused, shunned, con-
temned, left to the alien and the stranger, and that
simply and solely because it bears the name of servant,
A Christian woman, who holds the name of Christ in
her heart in true devotion, would think it the greatest
possible misfortune and degradation to become like
him in taking upon her ' the form of a servant/ The
founder of Christianity says, ' Whether is greater, he
that sitteth at meat or he that serveth ? But / am
among you as he that serveth.' But notwithstanding
these so plain declarations of Jesus, we find that
scarce any one in a Christian land will accept real
advantages of position and emplo}'ment that come
with that name and condition."

" I supppse," said my wife, " I could prevail upon
this woman to do all the duties of the situation, if she

B

1 8 The Chimney-Comer.

could be, as they phrase it, ^ ti*eated as one of the
family.'

" That is to say," said Bob, " if she could sit with
us at the same table, be introduced to our friends, and
be in all respects as one of us. Now as to this, I am
free to say that I have no false aristocratic scruples.
I consider every w^ell-educated v/oman as fully my
equal, not to say my superior ; but it does not follow
from this that she v/ould be one whom I should wdsh
to make a third party wdth me and my wife at meal-
times. Our meals are often our seasons of privacy,
— the tunes w^hen we wish in perfect unreserve to
speak of matters that concern ourselves and our fam-
ily alone. Even invited guests and family friends
would not be always welcome, how^ever agreeable at
times. Now a w^oman may be perfectly w^orthy of re-
spect, and w^e may be perfectly respectful to her,
whom nevertheless we do not wish to take into the
circle of intimate friendship. I regard the position
of a woman who comes to perform domestic service
as I do any other business relation. We have a very
respectable young lady in our employ, who does
legal copying for us, and all is perfectly pleasant and
agreeable in our mutual relations ; but the case w^ould
be far otherwise, were she to take it into her head
that we treated her with contempt, because my wife
did not call on her, and because she was not occasion-

\

What will Yoic do with Her?

19

ally invited to tea. Besides, I apprehend that a
woman of quick sensibilities, employed in domestic
service, and who was so far treated as a member of
the family as to share our table, would find her posi-
tion even more painful and embarrassing than if she
took once for all the position of a servant. We could
not control the feelings of our friends ; we could not
always insure that they would be free from aristocratic
prejudice, even were we so ourselves. We could not
force her upon their acquaintance, and she might feel
far more slighted than she would in a position where
no attentions of any kind were to be expected. Be-
sides which, I have always noticed that persons stand-
ing in this uncertain position are objects of peculiar
antipathy to the servants in full : that they are the
cause of constant and secret cabals and discontents ;
and that a family where the two orders exist has al-
ways raked up in it the smouldering embers of a quar-
rel ready at any time to burst out into open feud."

" Well," said I, " here lies the problem of American
life. Half our v/omen, like Marianne, are being faded
and made old before their time by exhausting endeav-
ors to lead a life of high civilization and refinement
with only such untrained help as is washed up on our
shores by the tide of emigration. Our houses are
built upon a plan that precludes the necessity of much
hard labor, but requires rather careful and nice hand-

20

The Chimney-Comer,

ling. A well-trained, intelligent woman, who had
vitalized her finger-ends by means of a welUdeveloped
brain, could do all the work of such a house with
comparatively little physical fatigue. So stands the
case as regards our houses. Now over against the
19- women that are perishing in them from too much care,

there is another class of American v/omen that are
wandering up and down, perishing for lack of some
remunerating employment. That class of women,
whose developed brains and less developed muscles
mark them as peculiarly fitted for the performance of
the labors of a high civilization, stand utterly aloof
from paid domestic service. Sooner beg, sooner
starve, sooner marry for money, sooner hang on as
dependants in families where they know they are not
wanted, than accept of a quiet home, easy, healthful
work, and certain wages, in these refined and pleasant
modern dwellings of ours."

" What is the reason of this ? " said Bob.

" The reason is, that we have not yet come to the
full development of Christian democracy. The taint
of old aristocracies is yet pervading all parts of our
society. We have not yet realized fully the true dig-
nity of labor, and the surpassing dignity of domestic
labor. And I must say that the valuable and coura-
geous women who have agitated the doctrines of
Woman's Rights among us have not in all things seen
their way clear in this matter."

IV/ia^ ivill Yoii do with Her? 21

"Don't talk to me of those creatures," said Bob,
" those men-women, those anomahes, neither flesh nor
fish, with their conventions, and their cracked woman-
voices strained in what they call public speaking, but
which I call public squeaking ! No man reverences
true women more than I do. I 'hold a real, true,
thoroughly good womaft, whether in my parlor or my
kitchen, as my superior. She can always teach me
something that I need to know. She has always in
her somewhat of the divine gift of prophecy ; but in
order to keep it, she must remain a woman. AVhen
she crops her hair, puts on pantaloons, and strides
about in conventions, she is an abortion, and not a
woman."

Come ! come ! " said I, " after all, speak with
deference. We that choose to wear soft clothing and
dwell in kings' houses must respect the Baptists, who
wear leathern girdles, and eat locusts and wild honey.
They are the voices crying in the wilderness, prepar-
ing the way for a coming good. They go down on
their knees in the mire of life to lift up and brighten
and restore a neglected truth ; and we that have not
the energy to share their struggle should at least re-
frain from criticising their soiled garments and un-
graceful action. There have been excrescences, ec-
centricities, peculiarities, about the camp of these
reformers ; but the body of them have been true and

22

The Chimney-Corncr.

noble women, and worthy of all the reverence due to
such. ' They have already in many of our States re-
formed the lavv^s relating to woman's position, and
placed her on a more just and Christian basis. It is
through their movements that in many of our States a
woman can hold the fruits of her own earnings, if it
be her ill luck to have a worthless, drunken spend-
thrift for a husband. It is owing to their exertions
that new trades and professions are opening to wo-
man ; and all that I have to say of them is, that in
the suddenness of their zeal for opening new paths for
her feet, they have not sufficiently considered the.
propriety of straightening, widening, and mending the
one broad, good old path of domestic labor, estab-
lished by God himself. It does appear to me, that,
if at least a portion of their zeal could be spent in
removing the stones out of this highway of domestic
life, and making it pleasant and honorable, they would
effect even more. I would not have them leave un-
done what they are doing ; but I would, were I wor-
thy to be considered, humbly suggest to their pro-
phetic wisdom and enthusiasm, whether, in this new
future of women which they wish to introduce, wo-
men's natural, God -given employment of domestic
service is not to receive a new character, and rise in a
new form.

" ^ To love and serve ' is a motto worn with pride

W/ia^ will Vou do with Her?

23

on some aristocratic family shields in England. It
ought to be graven on the Christian shield. Servant
is the name which Christ gives to the Christian; and
in speaking of his kingdom as distinguished from
earthly kingdoms, he distinctly said, that rank there
should be conditioned, not upon desire to command,
but on v/illingness to serve.

^ Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise
dominion over them, and they that are great exercise
authority upon them. But it shall not be so among
you : but whosoever will be great among you, let him
be your minister ; and whosoever will be chief among
you, let him be your servant'

" Why is it, that this name of servant, v/hich Christ
says is the highest in the kingdom of heaven, is so
dishonored amxong us professing Christians, that good
women will beg or starve, will suffer almost any ex-
treme of poverty and privation, rather than accept
home, competence, security, with this honored name ? "

The fault with many of our friends of the Wo-
man's Rights order," said my wife, is the deprecia-
tory tone in which they have spoken of the dom^estic
labors of a family as being altogether below the scope
of the faculties of woman. ^ Domestie drudgery ' they
call it, — an expression that has done more harm than
any two words that ever were put together.

Think of a woman's calling clear-starching and

24

The Chimney-Corncr.

ironing domestic drudgery, and to better the n^atter
turning to type-setting in a grimy printing-office ! Call
the care of china and silver, the sweeping of carpets,
the arrangement of parlors and sitting-rooms, drudg-
ery ; and go into a factory and spend the day amid the
whir and clatter and thunder of machinery, inhaling
an atmosphere loaded with wool and machine-grease,
and keeping on the feet for twelve hours, nearly con-
tinuously ! Think of its being called drudgery to
take care of a clean, light, airy nursery, to wash and
dress and care for two or three children, to mend
their clothes, tell them stories, make them playthings,
take them out walking or driving ; and rather than
this, to wear out the whole livelong day, extending
often deep into the night, in endless sewing, in a close
room of a dressmaking establishment ! Is it any less
drudgery to stand all day behind a counter, serving
customers, than to tend a door-bell and wait on a
table ? For my part," said my wife, " I have often
thought the matter over, and concluded, that, if I were
left in straitened circumstances, as many are in a
great city, I would seek a position as a servant in one
of our good families."

" I envy the family that you even think of in '-that
connection," said I. " I fancy the amazement which
would take possession of them as you began to de
velop among them."

What will You do with Her?

25

" I have always held," said my wife, " that family
work, in many of its branches, can be better per-
formed by an educated woman than an uneducated
one. Just an army where even the bayonets think
is superior to one of mere brute force and mechanical
training, so>« I have heard it said, some of our distin-
guished modern female reformers show an equal supe-
riority in the domestic sphere, — and I do not "doubt
it Family work was never meant to be the special
province of untaught brains. I have sometimes
thought I should like to show what I could do as a
servant."

"Well," said Bob, "to return from all this to the
question. What's to be done with her? Are you
going to 77ty distressed woman ? If you are, suppose
you take your distressed woman along, and ask her to
try it. I can promise her a pleasant house, a quiet
room by herself, healthful and not too hard work, a
kind friend, and some leisure for reading, writing, or
whatever other pursuit of her own she may choose for
her recreation. We are always quite willing to lend
books to any who appreciate them. Our house is sur-
rounded by pleasant grounds, which are open to our
servants as to ourselves. So let her come and try us.
I am quite sure that country air, quiet security, and
moderate exercise in a good home, will bring up her
health ; and if she is willing to take the one or two
2

26

The Chimney-Corner.

disagreeables which may come with all this, let her try
us."

" Well," said I, " so be it ; and would that all the
women seeking homes and employment c^ld thus fall
in with women who have homes and are perishing in
them for want of educated helpers ! "

On this question of woman's work I have yet more
to say, but must defer it till another time.

11.

WOMAN'S SPHERE.

« T T 7HAT do you think of this Woman's Rights
^ * question ? " said Bob Stephens. " From
some of your remarks, I apprehend that you think
there is something in it. I may be wrong, but I must
confess that I have looked with disgust on the whole
movement. No man reverences women as I do ; but
I reverence them as women. I reverence them for
those very things in which their sex differs from ours ;
but when they come upon our ground, and begin to
work and fight after our manner and with our weap-
• ons, I regard them as fearful anomalies, neither men
nor women. These AVoman's Rights Conventions
appear to me to have ventilated crudities, absurdities,
and blasphemies. To hear them talk about men, one
would suppose that the two sexes were natural-born
enemies, and wonders whether they ever had fathers
and brothers. One would think, upon their showing,
that all men were a set of ruffians, in league against

28

The Chimney-Corner,

women, — they seeming, at the same time, to forget
how on their very platforms the most constant and
gallant defenders of their rights are men. Wendell
Phillips and Wentworth Higginson have put at the
service of the cause masculine training and manly
vehemence, and complacently accepted the wholesale
abuse of their own sex at the hands of their warrior
sisters. One would think, were all they say of female
powers true, that our Joan-of-Arcs ought to have dis-
dained to fight under male captains."

" I think,'' said my wife, " that, in all this talk about
the rights of men, and the rights of women, and the
rights of children, the world seems to be forgetting
what is quite as important, the duties of men and
women and children. We all hear of our rights till
we forget our duties ; and even theology is beginning
to concern itself more with what man has a right to
expect of his Creator than what the Creator has a
right to expect of man."

"You say the truth," said I ; "there is danger of
just this overaction ; and yet rights must be dis-
cussed ; because, in order to understand the duties we
owe to any class, we must understand their rights. To
know our duties to men, women, and children, we must
know what the rights of men, women, and children
justly are. As to the ' Woman's Rights movement,' it
is not peculiar to America, it is part of a great wave

Woman's Sphere,

29

in the incoming tide of modern civilization ; the swell
'Hi^ is felt no less in Europe, but it combs over and breaks
on our American shore, because our great wide beach
affords the best play for its waters ; 'and as the ocean
waves bring with them kelp, sea-weed, mud, sand,
gravel, and even putrefying debris, which lie unsightly
on the shore, and yet, on the whole, are healthful and
refreshing, — so the Woman's Rights movement, with
its conventions, its speech-makings, its crudities, and
eccentricities, is nevertheless a part of a healthful and
necessary movement of the human race towards pro-
gress. This question of Woman and her Sphere is now,
perhaps, the greatest of the age. W e have put Slavery
under foot, and with the downfall of Slavery the only
obstacle to the success of our great democratic experi-
ment is overthrown, and there seems no limit to the
splendid possibilities which it may open before the
human race.

" In the reconstruction that is now coming there
lies more than the reconstruction of States and the
arrangement of the machinery of government. We
need to know and feel, all of us, that, from the mo-
ment of the death of Slavery, we parted finally from
the regime and control of all the old ideas formed
under old oppressive systems of society, and came
upon a new plane of life.

" In this new life we must never forget that we are a

30

The Chimney-Corner,

peculiar people, that we have to walk in paths unknown
to the Old World, — paths where its wisdom cannot
guide us, where its precedents can be of little use to
us, and its criticisms, in most cases, must be wholly
irrelevant. The history of our war has shown us of
how little service to us in any important crisis the opin-
ions and advice of the Old World can be. We have
been hurt at what seemed to us the want of sympathy,
the direct antagonism, of England. We might have
been less hurt if we had properly understood that
Providence had placed us in a position so far ahead of
her ideas or power of comprehension, that just judg-.
ment or sympathy was not to be expected from her.

" As we went through our great war with no help
but that of God, obliged to disregard the misconcep-
tions and impertinences which the foreign press rained
down upon us, so, if we are wise, we shall- continue to
do. Our object must now be to make the principles
on which our government is founded permeate consist-
ently the mass of society, and to purge out the leaven
of aristocratic and Old World ideas. So long as there
is an illogical working in our actual life, so long as
there is any class denied equal rights with other classes^'
so long will there be agitation and trouble."

"Then," said my wife, "you believe that women
ought to vote ?"

" If the principle on which we founded our govern-

Womaii^s Sphere,

31

ment is true, that taxation must not exist without
representation, and if women hold property and are
taxed, it follows that women should be represented
in the State by their votes, or there is an illogical *
working of our government/'

" But, my dear, don't you think tEiat this will have
a bad effect on the female character ? "

" Yes," said Bob, " it will make women caucus-
holders, political candidates."

" It may make this of some w^omen, just as of some
men," said I. " But all men do not take any great
interest in politics ; it is very difficult to get some of
the best of them to do their duty in voting ; and the
same will be found true among women. "

" But, after all," said Bob, " what do you gain ?
What will a woman's vote be but a duplicate of that of
her husband or father, or whatever man happens to be
her adviser ? "

" That may be true on a variety of questions ; but
there are subjects on which the vote of women would,
I think, be essentially different from that of men. On
the subjects of temperance, public morals, and educa-
tion, I have no doubt that the introduction of the
female vote into legislation, in States, counties, and
cities, would produce results very different from that of
men alone. There are thousands of women who
would close grogshops, and stop the traffic in spirits, if

32

The Chimney-Corner,

they had the legislative power ; and it would be well
for society if they had. In fact, I think that a State
can no more afford to dispense with the vote of women
in its affairs than a family. Imagine a family where the
female has no voice in the housekeeping ! A State is
but a larger family, and there are many of its concerns
which equally with those of a private household would
be bettered by female supervision."

" But fancy women going to those horrible voting-
places ! It is more than I can do myself," said Bob.

" But you forget," said I, " that they are horrible and
disgusting principally because women never go to
them. All places where women are excluded tend
downward to barbarism ; but the moment she is intro-
duced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness,
sobriety, and order. When a man can walk up to the
ballot-box with his wife or his sister on his arm, voting-
places will be far more agreeable than now ; and the
polls will not be such bear-gardens that refined men
will be constantly tempted to omit their political duties
there.

" If for nothing else, I would have women vote, that
the business of voting may not be so disagreeable and
intolerable to men of refinement as it now is ; and I
sincerely believe that the cause of good morals, good
order, cleanliness, and public health would be a gaine/,
not merely by the added feminine vote, but by the

Woma7ts Sphere.

33

added vote of a great many excellent, but too fastidi-
ous men, who are now kept from the polls by the dis-
agreeables they meet there.

" Do you suppose, that, if women had equal repre-
sentation with men in the municipal laws of New
York, its reputation for filth during' the last year would
have gone so far beyond that of Cologne, or any other
city renowned for bad smells ? I trow not. I believe
a lady-mayoress would have brought in a dispensation
of brooms and whitewash, and made a terrible search-
ing into dark holes and vile corners^ before now. Fe-
male New York, I have faith to believe, has yet left in
her enough of the primary instincts of womanhood to
give us a clean, healthy city, if female votes had any
power to do it."

"But," said Bob, "you forget that voting would
bring together all the women of the lower classes."

" Yes ; but thanks to the instincts of their sex, they
would come in their Sunday clothes ; for where is the
woman that has n't her finery, and will not embrace
every chance to show it ? Biddy's parasol, and hat
with pink ribbons, would necessitate a clean shirt in
Pat as much as on Sunday. Voting would become a
fcte^ and we should have a population at the polls as
well dressed as at church. Such is my belief"

" I do not see," said Bob, " but you go to the full
extent with our modern female reformers."

34

The Clmnney-Corner,

"There are certain neglected truths, which have
been held up by these reformers, that are gradually
being accepted and infused into the life of modern
society ; and their recognition will help to solidify and
purify democratic institutions. They are, —

" I. The right of every woman to hold independent
property.

" 2. The right of every woman to receive equal pay
with man for work which she does equally well.

" 3. The right of any woman to do any work for
which, by her natural organization and talent, she is
peculiarly adapted.

"Under the first head, our energetic sisters have
already, by the help of their gallant male adjutants,
reformed the laws of several of our States, so that a
married woman is no longer left the unprotected legal
slave of any unprincipled, drunken spendthrift who
may be her husband, — but, in case of the imbecility
or improvidence of the natural head of the family, the
wife, if she have the ability, can conduct business,
make contracts, earn and retain money for the good of
the household ; and I am sure no one can say that
immense injustice and cruelty are not thereby pre-
vented.

"It is quite easy for women who have the good
fortune to have just and magnanimous husbands to
say that they feel no interest in such reforms, and that

Woman's Sphere,

35

they would willingly trust their property to the man to
whom they give themselves ; but they should remem-
ber that laws are not made for the restraint of the
generous and just, but of the dishonest and base.
The law which enables a married woman to hold her
own property does not forbid her to give it to the man
of her heart, if she so pleases ; and it does protect
many women who otherwise would be reduced to the
extremest misery. I once knew an energetic milliner
who had her shop attached four times, and a flourish-
ing business broken up in four different cities, because
she was tracked from city to city by a worthless
spendthrift, Avho only waited till she had amassed a
little property in a new place to swoop down upon
and carry it off. It is to be hoped that the time is
not distant when every State will give to woman a fair
chance to the ownership and use of her own earnings
and her own property.

" Under the head of the right of every woman to do
any work for which by natural organization and talent
she is especially adapted, there is a word or two to be
said.

" The talents and tastes of the majority of women
are naturally domestic. The family is evidently their
sphere, because in all ways their organization fits them
for that more than for anything else.

" But there are occasionally women who are excep-

36

The Chimney-Comer,

tions to the common law, gifted with peculiar genius
and adaptations. With regard to such women, there
has never seemed to be any doubt in the verdict of
mankind, that they ought to follow their nature, and
that their particular sphere was the one to which they
are called. Did anybody ever think that Mrs. Sid-
dons and Mrs. Kemble and Ristori had better have
applied themselves sedulously to keeping house, be-
cause they were women, and ' woman's noblest station
is retreat ? '

"The world has always shown a fair average of
good sense in this matter, — from the days of the fair
Hypatia in Alexandria, who, we are told, gave lec-
tures on philosophy behind a curtain, lest her charms
should distract the attention of too impressible young
men, down to those of Anna Dickinson. Mankind
are not, after all, quite fools, and seem in these cases
to have a reasonable idea that exceptional talents
have exceptional laws, and make their own code of
proprieties.

" Now there is no doubt that Miss Dickinson,
though as relating to her femininity she is quite as
pretty and modest a young woman as any to be found
in the most sheltered circle, has yet a most excep-
tional talent for public speaking, which draws crowds
to hear her, and makes lecturing for her a lucrative
profession, as well as a means of advocating just and

Woman's Sphere,

37

generous sentiments, and of stimulating her own sex
to nobler purposes ; and the same law which relates
to Siddons and Kemble and Ristori relates also to
her.

" The doctrine of vocations is a good one and a safe
one. If a woman mistakes her vocation, so much the
worse for her ; the world does not suffer, but she
does, and the suffering speedily puts her where she
belongs. There is not near so much danger from
attempts to imitate Anna Dickinson, as there is
from the more common feminine attempts to rival the
demi-monde of Paris in fantastic extravagance and
luxury.

As to how a woman may determine whether she
has any such vocation, there is a story quite in point.
A good Methodist elder was listening to an ardent
young mechanic, who thought he had a call to throw
up his shop and go to preaching.

" ^ I feel,' said the young ardent, ^ that I have a call
to preach.'

^ Hast thou noticed whether people seem to have
a call to hear thee?' said the shrewd old man. *I
have always noticed that a true call of the Lord may
be known by this, * that people have a call to hear.' "

"Well," said Bob, "the most interesting question
still remains : What are to be the employments of
woman ? What ways are there for her to use her

38

The Chimney-Corner,

talents, to earn her livelihood and support those who
are dear to her, when Providence throws that neces-
sity upon her? This is becoming more than ever one
of the pressing questions of our age. The war has
deprived so many thousands of women of their natural
protectors, that everything must be thought of that
may possibly open a way for their self-support."

'*'Well, let us look over the field," said my wife.
"What is there for woman?"

" In the first place," said I, " come the professions
requiring natural genius, — authorship, painting, sculp-
ture, with the subordinate arts of photographing, col-
oring, and finishing; but when all is told, these fur-
nish employment to a very limited number, — almost
as nothing to the whole. Then there is teaching,
which is profitable in its higher branches, and per-
haps the very pleasantest of all the callings open to
woman ; but teaching is at present an overcrowded
profession, the applicants everywhere outnumbering
the places. Architecture and landscape-gardening
are arts every way suited to the genius of woman, and
there are enough who have the requisite mechanical
skill and mathematical education ; and though never
yet thought of for the sex, that I know of, I do not
despair of seeing those who shall find in this field a
profession at once useful and elegant. When women
plan dwelling-houses, the vast body of tenements to

Woman* s Sphere,

39

be let in our cities will wear a more domestic and
comfortable air, and will be built more with reference
to the real wants of their inmates."

" I have thought," said Bob, " that agencies of vari-
ous sorts, as canvassing the country for the sale of
books, maps, and engravings, might properly employ
a great many women. There is a large class whose
health suffers from confinement and sedentary occupa-
tions, who might, I think, be both usefully and agree-
ably employed in business of this sort, and be recruit-
ing their health at the same time."

" Then," said my wife, " there is the medical pro-
fession."

"Yes,'' s^id I. "The world is greatly obliged to
Miss Blackwell and other noble pioneers who faced
and overcame the obstacles to the attainment of a
thorough medical education by females. ^Thanks to
them, a new and lucrative profession is now open to
educated women in relieving the distresses of their
own sex ; and we may hope that in time, through
their intervention, the care of the sick may also be-
come the vocation of cultivated, refined, intelligent
women, instead of being left, as heretofore, to the
ignorant and vulgar. The experience of our late
war has shown us what women of a high class morally
and intellectually can do in this capacity. Why
should not this experience inaugurate a new and sa-

40

The Chimney-Corner.

cred calling for refined and educated women ? Why
should not nursing become a vocation equal in dig-
nity and in general esteem to the medical profession,
of which it is the right hand ? Why should our dear-
est hopes, in the hour 'of their greatest peril, be com-
mitted into the hands of Sairey Gamps, when the
world has seen Florence Nightingales ? "

" Yes, indeed," said my wife ; *' I can testify, from
my own experience, that the sufferings and dangers of
the sick-bed, for the want of intelligent, educated
nursing, have been dreadful. A prejudiced, pig-
headed, snuff-taking old woman, narrow-minded and
vulgar, and more confident in her own way than seven
men that can render a reason, enters your house at
just the hour and moment when all your dearest
earthly hopes are brought to a crisis. She becomes
absolute dTctator over your delicate, helpless wife and
your frail babe, — the absolute dictator of all in the
house. If it be her sovereign will and pleasure to
enact all sorts of physiological absurdities in the prem-
ises, who shall say her nay ? * She knows her busi-
ness, she hopes ! ' And if it be her edict, as it was
of one of her class whom I knew, that each of her
babies shall eat four baked beans the day it is four
days old, eat them it must ; and if the baby die in
convulsions four days after, it is set down as the mys-
terious will of an overruling Providence,

Woman's Sphere.

41

"I know and have seen women lying upon laced
pillows under silken curtains, who have been bullied
and dominated over in the hour of their greatest help-
lessness by ignorant and vulgar tyra'nts, in a way that
would scarce be thought possible in civilized society,
and children that have been injured or done to death
by the same means. A celebrated physician told me
of a babe whose eyesight was nearly ruined by its
nurse taking a fancy to wash its eyes with camphor,
* to keep it from catching cold,' she said. I knew
another infant that was poisoned by the nurse giving
it laudanum in some of those patent nostrums which
these ignorant creatures carry secretly in their pockets,
to secure quiet in their little charges. I knew one
delicate woman who never recovered from the effects
of being left at her first confinement in the hands of
an ill-tempered, drinking nurse, and whose feeble in-
fant was neglected and abused by this woman in a
way to cause lasting injury. In the first four weeks
of infancy the constitution is peculiarly impressible ;
and infants of a delicate organization may, if fright-
ened and ill-treated, be the subjects of just such a
shock to the nervous system as in mature age comes
from the sudden stroke of a great affliction or terror.
A bad nurse may afi"ect nerves predisposed to weak-
ness in a manner they never will recover from. I sol-
emnly believe that the constitutions of more women

42

The Chiimiey-Conter.

are broken up by bad nursing in their first confine-
ment than by any other cause whatever. And yet
there are at the same time hundreds and thousands of
women wanting the means of support, whose presence
in a sick-room would be a benediction. I do trust
that Miss Blackwell's band of educated nurses will
not be long in coming, and that the number of such
may increase till they effect a complete revolution in
this vocation. A class of cultivated, well-trained^
intelligent nurses would soon elevate the employment
of attending on the sick into the noble calling it
ought to be, and secure for it its appropriate rewards."

" There is another opening for woman," said I, —
"in the world of business. The system of commer-
cial colleges now spreading over our land is a new
and a most important development of our times.
There that large class of young men who have either
no time or no inclination for an extended classical
education can learn what will fit them for that active
material life which in our broad country needs so
many workers. But the most pleasing feature of these
institutions is, that the complete course is open to
women no less than to men, and women there may
acquire that knowledge of book-keeping and accounts,
and of the forms and principles of business transac-
tions, which will qualify them for some of the lucrative
situations hitherto monopolized by the other sex.

Woman's Sphere.

43

And the expenses of the course of instruction are so
arranged as to come within the scope of very mod-
erate means. A fee of fifty dollars entitles a woman
to the benefit of the whole course, and she has the
privilege of attending at any hours that may suit her
own engagements and convenience."

" Then, again," said my wife, " there are the depart-
ments of millinery and dressmaking, and the various
branches of needle-work, which afford employment to
thousands of women ; there is type-setting, by which
many are beginning to get a living ; there are the
manufactures of cotton, woollen, silk, and the num-
berless useful articles which employ female hands in
their fabrication, — all of them opening avenues by
which, with more or less success, a subsistence can be
gained.''

"Well, really,'* said Bob, "it would appear, after
all, that there are abundance of openings for women.
What is the cause of the outcry and distress ? How
is it that we hear of women starving, driven to vice
and crime by want, when so many doors of useful and
profitable employment stand open to them ? "

" The question would easily be solved," said my wife,
" if you could once see the kind and class of women
who thus suffer and starve. There may be exceptions,
but too large a portion of them are girls and women
who can or will do no earthly thing wdl^ — and what

44

The Chimney-Corner,

is worse, are not willing to take the pains to be taught
to do anything well. I will describe to you one girl,
and you will find in every intelligence-office a hundred
of her kind to five thoroughly trained ones.

. " Imprimis : she is rather delicate and genteel-look-
ing, and you may know firom the arrangement of her
hair just what the last mode is of disposing of rats or
waterfalls. She has a lace bonnet with roses, a silk
mantilla, a silk dress trimmed with velvet, a white
skirt with sixteen tucks and an embroidered edge, a
pair of cloth gaiters, underneath which are a pair of
stockings without feet, the only pair in her possession.
She has no under-linen, and sleeps at night in the
working-clothes she wears in the day. She never
seems to have in her outfit either comb, brush, or
tooth-brush of her own, — neither needles, thread,
scissors, nor pins ; her money, when she has any,
being spent on more important articles, such as the
lace bonnet or silk mantilla, or the rats and waterfalls
that glorify her head. When she wishes to sew, she
borrows what is needful of a convenient next neigh-
bor ; and if she gets a place in a family as second
girl, she expects to subsist in these respects by bor-
rowing of the better-appointed servants, or helping
herself from the family stores.

" She expects, of course, the very highest wages, if
she condescends to live out ; and by help of a trim

Womails Sphere. 45

outside appearance and the many vacancies that are
continually occurring in households, she gets places,
where her object is to do just as little of any duty
assigned to her as possible, to hurry through her per-
formances, put on her fine clothes, and go a-gadding.
She is on free and easy terms with' all the men she
meets, and ready at jests and repartee, sometimes far
from seemly. Her time of service in any one place
lasts indifferently from a fortnight to two or three
months, when she takes her wages, buys her a new
parasol in the latest style, and goes back to the intelli-
gence-office. In the different families where she has
lived she has been told a hundred times the pro-
prieties of household life, how to make beds, arrange
rooms, wash china, glass, and silver, and set tables ;
but her habitual rule is to try in each place how small
and how poor services will be accepted. When she
finds less will not do, she gives more. AVhen the mis-
tress follows her constantly, and shows an energetic
determination to be well served, she shows that she
can serve well ; but the moment such attention relaxes,
she slides back again. She is as destructive to a
house as a fire ; the very spirit of wastefulness is in
her ; she cracks the china, dents the silver, stops the
water-pipes with rubbish, and after she is gone, there
is generally a sum equal to half her wages to be ex-
pended in repairing the effects of her carelessness.

46

The Chimney-Comer,

And yet there is one thing to be said for her : she is
quite as careful of her employer's things as of her
own. The full amount of her mischiefs often does
not appear at once, as she is glib of tongue, adroit in
apologies, and lies with- as much alertness and as little
thought of conscience as a blackbird chatters. It is
difficult for people who have been trained from child-
hood in the school of verities, — who have been
lectured for even the shadow of a prevarication, and
shut up in disgrace for a lie, till truth becomes a habit
of their souls, — it is very difficult for people so edu-
cated to understand how to get on with those who
never speak the truth except by mere accident, who
assert any and everything that comes into their heads
with all the assurance and all the energy of perfect
verity.

" What becomes of this girl ? She finds means, by
begging, borrowing, living out, to keep herself ex-
tremely trim and airy for a certain length of time, till
the rats and waterfalls, the lace hat and parasol, and
the glib tongue, have done their work in making a
fool of some honest young mechanic who earns three
dollars a day. She marries him with no higher object
than to have somebody to earn money for her to
spend. And what comes of such marriages ?

" That is one ending of her career ; the other is on
the street, in haunts of vice, in prison, in drunkenness,
and death.

Womafis Sphere. 47

. " Whence come these girls ? They are as numer-
ous as yellow butterflies in autumn ; they flutter up to
cities from the country ; they grow up from mothers
who ran the same sort of career before them ; and the
reason why in the end they fall out of all reputable
employment and starve on poor w^ages is, that they
become physically, mentally, and morally incapable of
rendering any service which society will think worth
paying for."

I remember," said I, that the head of the most
celebrated dress-making establishment in New York,
in reply to the appeals of the needle-women of the
city for sympathy and wages, came out with published
statements to this effect : that the difficulty lay not in
unwillingness of employers to pay what work was
worth, but in finding any work worth paying for ; that
she had many applicants, but among them few who
could be of real use to her ; that she, in common with
everybody in this country, who has any kind of serious
responsibilities to carry, was continually embarrassed
for want of skilled work-people, who could take and
go on with the labor of her various departments with-
out her constant supervision ; that out of a hundred
girls, there would not be more than five to whom she
could give a dress to be made and dismiss it from her
mind as something certain to be properly done.

" Let people individually look around their own lit-

48

The Chimney-Corner,

tie sphere, and ask themselves if they know any wo-
man really excelling in any valuable calling or accom-
plishment who is suffering for want of work. All of
us know seamstresses, dress-makers, nurses, and laun-
dresses, who have made themselves such a reputation,
and are so beset and overcrowded with work, that the
vv'hole neighborhood is constantly on its knees to them
with uplifted hands. The fine seamstress, who can
cut and make trousseaus and layettes in elegant per-
fection, is always engaged six months in advance ; the
pet dress-maker of a neighborhood must be engaged
in May for September, and in September for May ; a
laundress who sends your clothes home in nice order
always has all the work that she can do. Good work
in any department is the rarest possible thing in our
American life ; and it is a fact that the great majority
of workers, both in the family and out, do only toler-
ably well, — not so badly that it actually cannot be
borne, yet not so well as to be a source of real,
thorough satisfaction. The exceptional worker in
every neighborhood, who does things really well^ can
always set her own price, and is always having more
offering than she can possibly do.

" The trouble, then, in finding employment for wo-
men lies deeper than the purses or consciences of the
employers ; it lies in the want of education in women ;
the want of education^ I say, — meaning by education

Woman's Sphere, 49

that which fits a woman for practical and profitable
employment in life, and not mere common school
learning."

^' Yes/' said my wife ; " for it is a fact that the most
troublesome and hopeless persons to provide for are
often those who have a good medium education, but
no feminine habits, no industry, no practical calcula-
tion, no muscular strength, and no knowledge of any
one of woman's peculiar duties. In the earlier days of
New England, women, as a class, had far fewer oppor-
tunities for acquiring learning, yet were far better
educated, physically and morally, than now. The
high school did not exist ; at the common school they
learned reading, writing, and arithmetic, and practised
speUing; while at home they did the work of the
household. They were cheerful, bright, active, ever
on the alert, able to do anything, from the harnessing
and driving of a horse to the finest embroidery. The
daughters of New England in those days looked the
world in the face without a fear. They shunned no
labor ; they were afraid of none ; and they could al-
ways find their way to a living."

" But although less instructed in school learning,"
said I, "they showed no deficiency in intellectual
acumen. I see no such women, nowadays, as some
I remember of that olden time, — women whose
strong minds and ever active industry carried on
3 i>

The Chiimtey-Corner.

reading and study side by side with household
toils.

" I remember a young lady friend of mine, attend-
ing a celebrated boarding-school, boarded in the fam-
ily of a woman who had never been to school longer
than was necessary to learn to read and write, yet
who was a perfect cyclopedia of general information.
The young scholar used to take her Chemistry and
Natural Philosophy into the kitchen, where her friend
was busy with her household work, and read her les-
sons to her, that she might have the benefit of her
explanations ; and so, while the good lady scoured
her andirons or kneaded her bread, she lectured to
her protegee on mysteries of science far beyond the
limits of the text-book. Many of the graduates of
our modern high schools would find if hard to shine
in conversation on the subjects they had studied, in
the searching presence of some of these vigorous
matrons of the olden time, whose only school had
been the leisure hours gained by energy and method
from their family cares."

" And in those days," said my wife, " there lived in
our families a class of American domestics, women of
good sense and good powers of reflection, who applied
this sense and power of reflection to household mat-
ters. In the early part of my married life, I myself
had American * help ' ; and they were not only excel-

Woman's Sphere,

lent servants, but trusty and invaluable friends. But
now, all this class of applicants for domestic service
have disappeared, I scarce know why or how. All I
know is, there is no more a Betsey or a Lois, such as
used to take domestic cares off my shoulders so com-
pletely."

" Good heavens ! where are they ? " cried Bob.
" Where do they hide ? I would search through the
world after such a prodigy ! "

" The fact is," said I, " there has been a slow and
gradual reaction against household labor in America.
Mothers began to feel that it was a sort of curse, to be
spared, if possible, to their daughters ; women began
to feel that they were fortunate in proportion as they
were able to be entirely clear of family responsibilities.
Then Irish labor began to come in, simultaneously
with a great advance in female education.

"For a long while nothing was talked of, written
of, thought of, in teachers' meetings, conventions,
and assemblies, but the neglected state of female
education ; and the whole circle of the arts and sci-
ences was suddenly introduced into our free-school
system, from which needle-work as gradually and
quietly was suffered to drop out. The girl who at-
tended the primary and high school had so much
study imposed on her that she had no time for sewing
or housework ; and the delighted mother was only

52 The Chimney-Corner,

too happy to darn her stockings and do the house-
work alone, that her daughter might rise to a higher
plane than she herself had attained to. The daugh-
ter, thus educated, had, on coming to womanhood, no
solidity of muscle, no manual dexterity, no practice or
experience in domestic life ; and if she were to seek a
livelihood, there remained only teaching, or some
feminine trade, or the factory."

"These factories," said my wife, "have been the
ruin of hundreds and hundreds of our once healthy
farmers' daughters and others from the country.
They go there young and unprotected ; they live there
in great boarding-houses, and associate with a pro-
miscuous crowd, without even such restraints of mater-
nal supervision as they would have in great boarding-
schools ; their bodies are enfeebled by labor often
necessarily carried on in a foul and heated atmos-
phere ; and at the hours when off duty, they are ex-
posed to all the dangers of unwatched intimacy with
the other sex.

" Moreover, the factory-girl learns and practises but
one thing, — some one mechanical movement, which
gives no scope for invention, ingenuity, or any other*
of the powers called into play by domestic labor ; so
that she is in reality unfitted in every way for family
duties.

" Many times it has been my lot to try, in my fam-

Woman's Sphere,

53

ily service, girls who have left factories ; and I have
found them wholly useless for any of the things which
a woman ought to be good for. They knew nothing
of a house, or what ought to be do*ne in it ; they had
imbibed a thorough contempt of household labor, and
looked upon it but as a dernier res sort ; and it was only
the very lightest of its tasks that they could even be-
gin to think of. I remember I tried to persuade one
of these girls, the pretty daughter of a fisherman, to
take some lessons in washing and ironing. She was
at that time engaged to be married to a young me-
chanic, who earned something like two or three dollars
a day.

" ^ My child,^ said I, ^you will need to understand
all kinds of "Jiousework, if you are going to be mar-
ried.'

" She tossed her little head, —
" ^ Indeed, she was n't going to trouble herself about
that.'

" ' But who will get up your husband's shirts ? '

" * O, he must put them out. I 'm not going to be
married to make a slave of myself ! '

" Another young factory-girl, who came for table
and parlor work, was so full of airs and fine notions,
that it seemed as difficult to treat with her as with a
princess. She could not sweep, because it blistered
her hands, which, in fact, were long and delicate ; she

54 '^he Chimney-Comer,

could not think of putting them into hot dish-water,
and for that reason preferred washing the dishes in
cold water ; she required a full hour in the morning
to make her toilet ; she was laced so tightly that she
could not stoop without vertigo, and her hoops were
of dimensions which seemed to render it impossible
for her to wait upon table ; she was quite exhausted
with the effort of ironing the table-napkins and cham-
ber-towels ; — yet she could not think of ' living out '
under two dollars a week.

" Both these girls had had a good free-school educa-
tion, and could read any amount of novels, write a
tolerable letter, but had not learned anything with
sufficient accuracy to fit them for teachers. They
were pretty, and their destiny was to marry and lie a
dead weight on the hands of some honest man, and
to increase, in their children, the number of incapa-
bles."

" Well," said Bob, " what would you have ? What
is to be done ? "

" In the first place," said I, I would have it felt
by those who are seeking to elevate woman, that the
work is to be done, not so much by creating for her
new spheres of action as by elevating her conceptions
of that domestic vocation to which God and Nature
have assigned her. It is all very well to open to her
avenues of profit and advancement in the great outer

Woina/is Sphere.

SS

world ; but, after all, io make and keep a home is, and
ever must be, a woman's first glory, her highest aim.
No work of art can compare with a perfect home )
the training and guiding of a family must be recog-
nized as the highest work a woman can perform ; and
female education ought to be conducted with special
reference to this.

" Men are tramed to be lawyers, to be physicians,
to be mechanics, by long and self-denying study and
practice. A man cannot even make shoes merely by
going to the high school, and learning reading, writing,
and mathematics ; he cannot be a book-keeper or a
printer simply from general education.

" Now women have a sphere and profession of
their own, — a profession fOr w^hich they are fitted by
physical organization, by their own instincts, and to
which they are directed by the pointing and manifest
finger of God, — and that sphere is fainily life.

"Duties to the State and to public life they may
have j but the public duties of women must bear to
their family ones the same relation that the family >
duties of men bear to their public ones.

" The defect in the late efforts to push on female
education is, that it has been for her merely general,
and that it has left out and excluded all that is
professional ; and she undertakes the essential duties
of womanhood, when they do devolve on her, without
any adequate preparation."

56

The Chimney-Corner,

" But is it possible for a girl to learn at school the
things which fit her for family life ? said Bob.

"Why not?" I replied. "Once it was thought im-
possible in schools to teach girls geometry, or algebra,
or the higher mathematics ; it was thought impossible
to put them through collegiate courses ; but it has
been done, and we see it. Women study treatises on
political economy in schools ; and why should not the
study of domestic economy form a part of every
school course ? A young girl will stand up at the
blackboard, and draw and explain the compound
blowpipe, and describe all the process of making
oxygen and hydrogen. Why should she not draw and
explain a refrigerator as well as an air-pump ? Both
are to be explained on philosophical principles.
When a school-girl, in her Chemistry, studies the
reciprocal action of acids and alkalies, what is there
to hinder the teaching her its application to the vari-
ous processes of cooking where acids and alkahes are
employed? Wliy should she not be led to see how
effervescence and fermentation can be made to per-
form their office in the preparation of light and di-
gestible bread? Why should she not be taught the
chemical substances by which food is often adulter-
ated, and the tests by which such adulterations are
detected ? Why should she not understand the
processes of confectionery, and know how to guard

Woman s Sphere, 57

against the deleterious or poisonous elements that are
introduced into children's sugar-plums and candies?
Why, when she learns the doctrine of mordants^ the
substances by which different colors are set, should she
not learn it with some practical view to future life, so
that she may know how to set the color of a fading
calico or restore the color of a spotted one ? Why, in
short, when a girl has labored through a profound
chemical work, and listened to courses of chemical
lectures, should she come to domestic life, which
presents a constant series of chemical experiments and
changes, and go blindly along as without chart or
compass, unable to tell what will take out a stain, or
what will brighten a metal, what are common poisons
and what their antidotes, and not knowing enough of
the laws of caloric to understand how to warm a
house, or of the laws of atmosphere to know how to
ventilate one? Why should the preparation, .of food,
that subtile art on which life, health, cheerfulness,
good temper, and good looks so largely depend, for-
ever be left in the hands of the illiterate and vulgar ?

" A benevolent gentleman has lately left a large
fortune for the founding of a university for women ; and
the object is stated to be to give women who have
already acquired a general education the means of
acquiring a professional one, to fit themselves for some
employment by which they may gain a livelihood,
3*

58

The Chimney -Corner,

" In this institution the women are to be instructed
in book-keeping, stenography, telegraphing, photo-
graphing, drawing, modelHng, and various other arts ;
but so far as I remember, there is no proposal to teach
domestic economy as at least one of woman's pro-
fessions.

" Why should there not be a professor of domestic
economy in every large female school ? Why should
not this professor give lectures, first on house-plan-
ning and building, illustrated by appropriate appara-
tus ? Why should not the pupils have presented to
their inspection models of houses planned with
reference to economy, to ease of domestic service, to
warmth, to ventilation, and to architectural appear-
ance ? Why should not the professor go on to lecture
further on house-fixtures, with models of the best
mangles, washing-machines, clothes-wringers, ranges,
furnaces, and cooking-stoves, together with drawings
and apparatus illustrative of domestic hydraulics,
showing the best contrivances for bathing-rooms and
the obvious principles of plumbing, so that the pupils
may have some idea how to work the machinery of a
convenient house when they have it, and to have such
conveniences introduced when wanting? If it is
thought worth while to provide, at great expense,
apparatus for teaching the revolutions of Saturn's
moons and the precession of the equinoxes, why

Woman s Sphere. 5g

should there not be some also to teach what it may
greatly concern a woman's earthly happiness to
know ?

"Why should" not the professor lecture on home-
chemistry, devoting his first lecture to bread-making ?
and why might not a batch of bread be made and
baked and exhibited to the class, together with speci-
mens of morbid anatomy in the bread line, — the sour
cotton bread of the baker, — the rough, big-holed
bread, — the heavy, fossil bread, — the bitter bread
of too much yeast, — and the causes of their defects
pointed out ? And so with regard to the various arti-
cles of food, — why might not chemical lectures be
given on all of them, one after another ? In short, it
would be easy to trace out a course of lectures on
common things to occupy a whole year, and for which
the pupils, whenever they come to have homes of
their own, will thank the lecturer to the last day of
their life.

" Then there is no impossibility in teaching needle-
work, the cutting and fitting of dresses, in female
schools. The thing is done very perfectly in English
schools for the working classes. A girl trained at one
of these schools came into a family I once knew.
She brought with her a sewing-book, in which the
process of making various articles was exhibited in
miniature. The several parts of a shirt were first

The Chimney 'Corner.

shown, each perfectly made, and fastened to a leaf of
the book by itself, and then the successive steps of
uniting the parts, till finally appeared a miniature
model of the whole. The sewing was done with red
thread, so that every stitch might show, and any
imperfection be at once remedied. The same process
was pursued with regard to other garments, and a good
general idea of cutting and fitting them was thus
given to an entire class of girls.

" In the same manner the care and nursing of
young children and the tending of the sick might be
made the subject of lectures. Every woman ought to
have some general principles to guide her with regard
to what is to be done in case of the various accidents
that may befall either children or grown people, and
of their lesser illnesses, and ought to know how to pre-
pare comforts and nourishment for the sick. Haw-
thorne's satirical -remarks upon the contrast between
the elegant Zenobia's conversation and the smoky
porridge she made for him when he was an invalid
might apply to the volunteer cookery of many charm-
ing women."

" I think," said Bob, " that your Professor of Do-
mestic Economy would find enough to occupy his
pupils.''

*'In fact," said I, "were domestic economy properly
honored and properly taught, in the manner described.

Woman's Sphere.

6i

it would open a sphere of employment to so many
women in the home life, that we should not be obliged
to send our women out to California or the Pacific to
put an end to an anxious and aimless life.

" When dpmestic work is sufficiently honored to be
taught as an art and science in our boarding-schools
and high schools, then possibly it may acquire also
dignity in the eyes of our working classes, and young
girls who have to earn their own living may no longer
feel degraded in engaging in domestic service. The
place of a domestic in a family may become as respect-
able in their eyes as a place in a factory, in a print-
ing-office, in a dressmaking or millinery establish-
ment, or behind the counter of a shop.

" In America there is no class which will confess
itself the lower class, and a thing recommended solely
for the benefit of any such class finds no one to re-
ceive it.

" If the intelligent and cultivated look down on
household worlj with disdain ; if they consider it as
degrading, a thing to be shunned by every possible
device ; they may depend upon it that the influence of
such contempt of woman's noble duties will flow
downward, producing a like contempt in every class
in life.

" Our sovereign princesses learn the doctrine of
equality very quickly, and are not going to sacrifice

62

The Chimney-Comer,

themselves to what is not considered de bon ton by the
upper classes ; and the girl with the laced hat and
IDarasol, without under-clothes, who does her best to
' shirk ' her duties as housemaid, and is looking for
marriage as an escape from work, is a fair copy of her
mistress, who married for much the same reason, who
hates housekeeping, and would rather board or do
anything else than have the care of a family ; — the
one is about as respectable as the other.

" When housekeeping becomes an enthusiasm, and
its study and practice a fashion, then we shall have in
America that class of persons to rely on for help in
household labors who are now going to factories, to
printing-offices, to every kind of toil, forgetful of the
best life and sphere of woman."

IIL

A FAMILY-TALK ON RECONSTRUCTION.

OUR Chimney-Corner, of which we have spoken
somewhat, has, besides the wonted domestic
circle, its habitues who have a frequent seat there.
Among these, none is more welcome than Theophilus
Thoro.

Friend Theophilus was born on the shady side of
Nature, and endowed by his patron saint with every
grace and gift which can make a human creature
worthy and available, except the gift of seeing the
bright side of things. His bead-roll of Christian
virtues includes all the graces of the spirit except
hope ; and so, if one wants to know exactly the flaw,
the defect, the doubtful side, and to take into ac-
count all the untoward possibilities of any person,
place, or thing, he had best apply to friend The-
ophilus. He can tell you just where and how the
best-laid scheme is likely to fail, just the screw that
will fall loose in the smoothest-working machinery,

64 The Chimney-Comer,

just the flaw in the most perfect character, just the
defect in the best- written book, just the variety of
thorn that must accompany each particular species of
rose.

Yet Theophilus is without guile or malice. His
want of faith in human nature is not bitter and censo-
rious, but melting and pitiful. We are all poor
trash, miserable dogs together," he seems to say, as
he looks out on the world and its ways. There is not
much to be expected of or for any of us ; but let us
love one another, and be patient.

Accordingly, Theophilus is one of the most inces-
sant workers for human good, and perseveringly busy
in every scheme of benevolent enterprise, in all which
he labors with melancholy steadiness without hope.
In religion he has the soul of a martyr, — nothing
would suit him better than to be burned alive for his
faith j but his belief in the success of Christianity is
about on a par with that of the melancholy disciple
of old, who, when Christ would go to Judaea, could
only say, " Let us also go, that we may die with him."
Theophilus is always ready to die for the truth and
the right, for which he never sees anything but defeat
and destruction ahead.

During the late war, Theophilus has been a despair-
ing patriot, dying daily, and giving all up for lost in
every reverse from Bull Run to Fredericksburg. The

A Family-Talk on Reconstruction, 65

surrender of Richmond and the capitulation of Lee
shortened his visage somewhat ; but the murder of
the President soon brought it back to its old length.
It is true, that, while Lincoln lived*, he was in a per-
petual state of dissent from all his measures. He
had broken his heart for years over the miseries of the
slaves, but he shuddered at the Emancipation Procla-
mation ; a whirlwind of anarchy was about to sweep
over the country, in which the black and the wliite
would dash against each other, and be shivered like
potters' vessels. He was in despair at the accession
of Johnson, — believing the worst of the unfavorable
reports that clouded his reputation. Nevertheless, he
was among the first of loyal citizens to rally to the
support of the new administration, because, though he
had no hope in that, he could see nothing better.

Yo-u must not infer from all this that friend Theoph-
ilus is a social wet blanket, a goblin shadow at the
domestic hearth. By no means. Nature has gifted
him with that vein of humor and that impulse to
friendly joviality which are frequent developments in
sad-natured men, and often deceive superficial ob-
servers as to their real character. He who laughs
well and makes you laugh is often called a man of
cheerful disposition ; yet in many cases nothing can
be further from it than precisely this kind of person.

Theophilus frequents our chimney-corner, perhaps

E

66

The Chimney-Corner.

because Mrs. Crowfield and myself are, so to speak,
children of the light and the day. My wife has pre-
cisely the opposite talent to that of our friend. She
can discover the good point, the sound spoty where
others see only defect and corruption. I myself am
somewhat sanguine, and prone rather to expect good
than evil, and with a vast stock of faith in the excel-
lent things that may turn up in the future. The Mil-
lennium is one of the prime articles of my creed ;
and all the ups and downs of society I regard only as
so many jolts on a very rough road that is taking the
world on, through many upsets and disasters, to that
final consummation.

Theophilus holds the same belief, theoretically ;
but it is apt to sink so far out of sight in the mire of
present disaster as to be of very little comfort to
him.

" Yes,'* he said, " we are going to ruin, in my view,
about as fast as we can go. Miss Jennie, I will
trouble you for another small lump of sugar in my
tea."

"You^have been saying that, about our going to
ruin, every time you have taken tea here for four years
past," said Jennie ; " but I always noticed that your
fears never spoiled your relish either for tea or muffins.
People talk about being on the brink of a volcano,
and the country going to destruction, and all that.

A Family-Talk on Reconstruction, 67

just as they put pepper on their potatoes; it is an
agreeable stimulant in conversation, — that's all."

" For my part/' said my wife, " I can speak in
another vein. When had we ever in all our history so
bright prospects, so much to be thankful for ? Slavery
is abolished ; the last stain of disgrace is wiped from
our national honor. We stand now before the world
self-consistent with our principles. We have come
out of one of the severest struggles that ever tried a
nation, purer and stronger in morals and religion, as
wxll as more prosperous in material things."

" My dear madam, excuse me," said Theophilus ;
" but I cannot help being reminded of what an Eng-
lish reviewer once said, — that a lady's facts have as
much poetry in them as Tom Moore's lyrics. Of
course poetry is always agreeable, even though of no
statistical value."

" I see no poetry in my facts," said Mrs. Crowfield.
" Is not slavery forever abolished, by the confession
of its best friends, — even of those who declare its
abolition a misfortune, and themselves ruined in
consequence ? "

" I confess, my dear madam, that we have suc-
ceeded as we human creatures commonly do, in sup-
posing that we have destroyed an evil, when v/e have
only changed its name. We have contrived to with-
draw from the slave just that fiction of property

68

The Chimney-Corner,

relation which made it for the interest of some one to
care for him a little, however imperfectly ; and having
destroyed that, we turn him out defenceless to shift
for himself in a community every member of which is
imbittered against him. The whole South resounds
with the outcries of slaves suffering the vindictive
wrath of former masters ; laws are being passed hunt-
ing them out of this State and out of that ; the
animosity of race — at all times the most bitter and
unreasonable of animosities — is being aroused all
over the land. And the Free States take the lead in
injustice to them. Witness a late vote of Connecti-
cut on the suffrage question. The efforts of govern-
ment to protect the rights of these poor defenceless
creatures are about as energetic as such efforts always
have been and always will be while human nature
remains what it is. For a while the obvious rights of
the weaker party will be confessed, with softie show
of consideration, in public speeches \ they will be
paraded by philanthropic sentimentalists, to give
point to their eloquence ; they will be here and there
sustained in governmental measures, when there is no
strong temptation to the contrary, and nothing better
to be done ; but the moment that political combina-
tions begin to be formed, all the rights and interests
of this helpless people will be bandied about as so
many make-weights in the political scale. Any

A Family-Talk on Reconstmction. 69

troublesome lion will have a negro thrown to him to
keep him quiet. All their hopes will be dashed to the
ground by the imperious Southern white, no longer
feeling for them even the interest Of a master, and
regarding them with a mixture of hatred and loathing
as the cause of all his reverses. Then if, driven to
despair, they seek to defend themselves by force, they
will be crushed by the power of the government,
and ground to powder, as the weak have always been
under the heel of the strong.

" So much for our abolition of slavery. As to our
material prosperity, it consists of an inflated paper
currency, an immense debt, a giddy, foolhardy spirit
of speculation and stock-gambling, and a perfect furor
of extravagance, which is driving everybody to live
beyond his means, and casting contempt on the re-
publican virtues of simplicity and economy.

" As to advancement in morals, there never was
so much intemperance in our people before, and the
papers are full of accounts of frauds, defalcations,
forgeries, robberies, assassinations, and arsons.
Against this tide of corruption the various organized
denominations of religion do nothing effectual. They
are an army shut up within their own intrenchments,
holding their own with difficulty, and in no situation
to turn back the furious assaults of the enemy."

" In short," said Jennie, " according to your show-

70 The Chimney-Corner.

ing, the whole country is going to destruction. Now,
if things really are so bad, if you really believe all
you have been saying, you ought not to be sitting
drinking your tea as you are now, or to have spent the
afternoon playing croquet with us girls ; you ought to
gird yourself with sackcloth, and go up and down the
land, raising the alarm, and saying, ' Yet forty days
and Nineveh shall be overthrown.' "

"Well," said Theophilus, while a covert smile
played about his lips, " you know the saying, ' Let us
eat and drink, for to-morrow,' etc. Things are not yet
g07te to destruction, only going, — and why not have a
good time on deck before the ship goes to pieces ?
Your chimney-corner is a tranquil island in the ocean
of trouble, and your muffins are absolutely perfect.
I '11 take another, if you '11 please to pass them."

" I 've a great mind not to pass them," said Jennie.
" Are you in earnest in what you are saying ? or are
you only saying it for sensation ? How ca7t people
believe such things and be comfortable ? /could not.
If I believed all you have been saying I could not
sleep nights, — I should be perfectly miserable ; and
you cannot really believe all this, or you would be."

" My dear child," said Mrs. Crowfield, " our friend's
picture is the truth painted with all its shadows and
none of its lights. All the dangers he speaks of are
real and great, but he omits the counterbalancing

A Family-Talk on Reconsimction. yi

good. Let 7ne speak now. There never has been a
time in our history when so many honest and just men
held power in our land as now, — never a government
before in which the public councils recognized with
more respect the just and the right. There never was
an instance of a powerful government showing more
tenderness in the protection of a weak and defenceless
race than ours has shown in the care of the free dm en
hitherto. There never was a case in which the people
of a country were more willing to give money and
time and disinterested labor to raise and educate
those who have thus been thrown on their care. Con-
sidering that we have had a great, harassing, and
expensive war on our hands, I think the amount done
by government and individuals for the freedmen
unequalled in the history of nations ; and I do not
know why it should be predicted from this past fact,
that, in the future, both government and people are
about to throw them to the lions, as Mr. Theophilus
supposes. Let us wait, at least, and see. So long as
government maintains a freedmen's bureau, adminis-
tered by men of such high moral character, we must
think, at all events, that there are strong indications
in the right direction. Just think of the immense
advance of public opinion within four years, and of
the grand successive steps of this advance, — Emanci-
pation in the District of Columbia, the Repeal of the

72

The Chimney-Corner,

Fugitive Slave Law, the General Emancipation Act,
the Amendment of the Constitution. All these do
not look as if the black were about to be ground to
powder beneath the heel of the white. If the negroes
are oppressed in the South, they can emigrate ; no
laws hold them ; active, industrious laborers will soon
find openings in any part of the Union."

" No," said Theophilus, " there will be black laws
like those of Illinois and Tennessee, there will be
turbulent uprisings of the Irish, excited by political
demagogues, that will bar them out of Northern
States. Besides, as a class, they will be idle and
worthless. It will not be their fault, but it will be the
result of their slave education. All their past obser-
vation of their masters has taught them that liberty
means licensed laziness, that work means degradation,
— and therefore they will loathe work, and cherish
laziness as the sign of liberty. ^ Am not I free ?
Have I not as good a right to do nothing as you ? '
will be the cry.

" Already the lazy whites, who never lifted a hand
in any useful employment, begin to raise the cry that
' niggers won't work ' ; and I suspect the cry may not
be without reason. Industrious citizens can never be
made in a community where the higher class think
useful labor a disgrace. The whites will oppose the
negro in every effort to rise ; they will debar him of

A Family-Talk on Reconstruction, 73

every civil and social right ; they will set him the
worst possible example, as they have been doing for
hundreds of years ; and then they will hound and hiss
at him for being what they made him. This is the
old track of the world, — the good, broad, reputable
road on which all aristocracies and privileged classes
have been always travelling ; and it 's not likely that
we shall have much of a secession from it. The Mil-
lennium is n't so near us as that, by a great deal."

" It 's all very well arguing from human selfishness
and human sin in that way," said I ; " but you can't
take up a newspaper that does n't contain abundant
facts to the contrary. Here, now," — and I turned to
the Tribune, — " is one item that fell under my eye
accidentally, as you were speaking : —

" * The Superintendent of Freedmen's Affairs in
Louisiana, in making up his last Annual Report, says
he has 1,952 blacks settled temporarily on 9,650
acres of land, who last year raised crops to the value
of % 175,000, and that he had but few worthless blacks
under his care ; and that, as a class, the blacks have
fewer vagrants than can be found* among any other
class of persons.'

''Such testimonies gem the newspapers like stars."--

" Newspapers of your way of thinking, very likely,"
said Theophilus ; " but if it comes to statistics, I can
bring counter-statements, numerous and dire, from
4

74

The Chimney-Corner,

scores of Southern papers, of vagrancy, laziness, im-
providence, and wretchedness."

" Probably both are true," said I, " according to the
ofreater or less care which has been taken of the blacks
in different regions. Left to themselves, they tend
downward, pressed down by the whole weight of semi-
barbarous white society \ but when the free North
protects and guides, the results are as you see."

" And do you think the free North has salt enough
in it to save this whole Southern mass from corrup-
tion ? I wish I could think so ; but all I can see in
the free North at present is a raging, tearing, head-
long chase after 77ioney\ Now money is of significance
only as it gives people the power of expressing their
ideal of life. And what does this ideal prove to be
among us.^ Is it not to ape all the splendors and
vices of old aristocratic society ? Is it not to be able
to live in idleness, without useful employment, a life
of glitter and flutter and show ? What do our New
York dames of fashion seek after ? To avoid family
care, to find servants at any price who will relieve
them of home responsibilities, and take charge of
their houses and children while they shine at ball and
opera, and drive in the park. And the servants who
learn of these mistresses, — what do they seek after ?
They seek also to get rid of care, to live as nearly as
possible without work, to dress and shine in their

A Family-Talk on Rcconstmction, 75

secondary sphere, as the mistresses do in the primary
one. High wages with little work and plenty of com-
pany express Biddy's ideal of life, which is a little
more respectable than that of her mistress, who wants
high wages with no work. The house and the chil-
dren are not Biddy's ; and why should she care more
for their well-being than the mistress and the mother?

" Hence come wranglings and meanings. Biddy
uses a chest of tea in three months, and the amount
of the butcher's bill is fabulous ; Jane gives the baby
laudanum to quiet it, while she slips out to her par-
ties ; and the upper classes are shocked at the demor-
alized state of the Irish, their utter want of faithful-
ness and moral principle ! How dreadful that there
are no people who enjoy the self-denials and the cares
which they dislike, that there are no people who re-
joice in carrying that burden of duties which they do
not wish to touch with one of their fingers ! The
outcry about the badness of servants means just this :
that everybody is tired of self-helpfulness, — the ser-
vants as thoroughly as the masters and mistresses.
All want the cream of life, without even the trouble
of skimming; and the great fight now is, who shall
drink the skim-milk, which nob.ody wants. Work, —
honorable toil, — manly, womanly endeavor, — is just
what nobody likes ; and this is as much a fact in the
free North as in the slave South.

76

The Chimney-Corner.

" What are all the young girls looking for in mar-
riage ? Some man with money enough to save them
from taking any care or having any trouble in domes-
tic life, enabhng them, like the lilies of the field, to
rival Solomon in all his glory, while they toil not,
neither do they spin ; and when they find that even
money cannot purchase freedom from care in family
life, because their servants are exactly of the same
mind with themselves, and hate to do their duties as
cordially as they themselves do, then are they in
anguish of spirit, and wish for slavery, or aristocracy,
or anything that would give them power over the
lower classes."

" But surely, Mr. Theophilus," said Jennie, " there
is no sin in disliking trouble, and wanting to live easily
and have a good time in one's life, — it 's so very
natural."

" No sin, my dear, I admit ; but there is a certain
amount of work and trouble that somebody must take
to carry on the family and the world j and the mis-
chief is, that all are agreed in wanting to get rid of it.
Human nature is aboye all things lazy. I am lazy my-
self Everybody is. The whole struggle of society is
as to who shall eat t) hard bread-and-cheese of labor,
which must be eaten by somebody. Nobody wants it,
— neither you in the parlor, nor Biddy in the kitchen.
^ The mass ought to labor, and we lie on sofas/ is

A Family-Talk on Reconstruction, 'jy

a sentence that would unite more subscribers than
any confession of faith that ever was presented,
whether reHgious or poHtical ; and its subscribers
would be as numerous and sincere in the Free States
as in the Slave States, or I am much mistaken in my
judgment. The negroes are men and women, like
any "of the rest of us, and particularly apt in the imi-
tation of the ways and ideas current in good society ;
and consequently to learn to play on the piano, and
to have nothing in particular to do, will be the goal of
aspiration among colored girls and women, and to do
housework will seem to them intolerable drudgery,
simply because it is so among the fair models to whom
they look up in humble admiration. You see, my
dear, what it is to live in a democracy. It deprives us
of the vantage-ground on which we cultivated people
can stand and say to our neighbor, — ' The cream is
for me, and the skim-milk for you ; the white bread
for me, and the brown for you. I am born to amuse
myself and have a good time, and you are born to do
everything that is tiresome and disagreeable to me.'
The ' My Lady Ludlows ' of the Old World can stand
on their platform and lecture the lower classes from
the Church Catechism, to ^ order themselves lowly and
reverently to all their betters ' ; and they can base
their exhortations on the old established law of society
by which some are born to inherit the earth, and live

78 The Ckimney-CorneK

a life of ease and pleasure, and others to toil without
pleasure or amusement, for their support and ag-
grandizement. An aristocracy, as I take it, is a
combination of human beings to divide life into two
parts, one of which shall comprise all social and
moral advantages, refinement, elegance, leisure, ease,
pleasure, and amusement, — and the other, incessant
toil, with the absence of every privilege and blessing
of human existence. Life thus divided, we aristocrats
keep the good for ourselves and our children, and
distribute the evil as the lot of the general mass of
mankind. The desire to monopolize and to dominate
is the most rooted form of human selfishness ; it is the
hydra with many heads, and, cut off in one place, it
puts out in another.

'^Nominally, the great aristocratic arrangement of
American society has just been destroyed ; but really,
I take it, the essential aniimcs of the slave system
still exists, and pervades the community. North as
well as South. Everybody is wanting to get the work
done by somebody else, and to take the money him-
self; the grinding between employers and employed
is going on all the time, and the field of controversy
has only been made wider by bringing in a whole new
class of laborers. The Irish have now the opportu-
nity to sustain their aristocracy over the negro. Shall
they not have somebody to look down upon ?

A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. 79

" All through free society, employers and employed
are at incessant feud ; and the more free and enlight-
ened the society, the more bitter the feud. The
standing complaint of life in America is the badness
of servants } and England, which always follows at a
certain rate behind us in our social movements, is
beginning to raise very loudly the same complaint.
The condition of service has been thought worthy of
public attention in some of the leading British prints ;
and Ruskin, in a summing-up article, speaks of it as
a deep ulcer in society, — a thing hopeless of
remedy."

" My dear Mr. Theophilus," said my wife, " I can-
not imagine whither you are rambling, or to what
purpose you are getting up these horrible shadows.
You talk of the world as if there were no God in it,
overruling the selfishness of men, and educating it up
to order and justice. I do not deny that there is a
vast deal of truth in what you say. Nobody doubts
that, in general, human nature is selfish, callous,
unfeeling, willing to engross all good to itself, and to
trample on the rights of others. Nevertheless, thanks
to God's teaching and fatherly care, the world has
worked along to the point of a great nation founded
on the principles of strict equality, forbidding all
monopolies, aristocracies, privileged classes, by its
very constitution ; and now, by God's wonderful prov-

8o

The Chimney-Corner.

idence, this nation has been brought, and forced, as it
were, to overturn and abolish the only aristocratic
institution that interfered with its free development.
Does not this look as if a Mightier Power than ours
were working in and for us, supplementing our weak-
ness and infirmity ? and if we believe that man is
always ready to drop everything and let it run back to
evil, shall we not have faith that God will not drop the
noble work he has so evidently taken in hand in this
nation ? "

" And I want to know," said Jennie, " why your
illustrations of selfishness are all drawn from the
female sex. Why do you speak of girls that marry
for money, any more than men ? of mistresses of fam-
ilies that want to be free from household duties and
responsibilities, rather than of masters ? "

" My charming young lady," said Theophilus, "it is
a fact that in America, except the slaveholders, women
have hitherto been the only aristocracy. Women have
been the privileged class, — the only one to which our
rough democracy has always and everywhere given
the precedence, — and consequently the vices of
aristocrats are more developed in them as a class than
among men. The leading principle of aristocracy,
which is to take pay without work, to live on the toils
and earnings of others, is one which obtains more
generally among women than among men in this

A Family-Talk on Reconstruction, 8i

country. The men of our country, as a general thing,
even in our uppermost classes, always propose to
themselves some work or business by which they may
acquire a fortune, or enlarge that already made for
them by their fathers. The women of the same class
propose to themselves nothing but to live at their
ease on the money made for them by the labors of
fathers and husbands. As a consequence, they be-
come enervated and indolent, — averse to any bracing,
wholesome effort, either mental or physical. The
unavoidable responsibilities and cares of a family, in-
stead of being viewed by them in the light of a noble
life-work, in which they do their part in the general
labors of the world, seem to them so many injuries
and wrongs ; they seek to turn them upon servants,
and find servants unwilling to take them ; and so
selfish are they, that I have heard more than one lady
declare that she did n't care if it was unjust, she
should like to have slaves, rather than be plagued with
servants who had so much liberty. All the novels,
poetry, and light literature of the world, which form
the general staple of female reading, are based upon
aristocratic institutions, and impregnated with aristo-
cratic ideas ; and women among us are constantly
aspiring to foreign and aristocratic modes of life
rather than to those of native, republican simplicity.
How many women are there, think you, that would
4* F -

82

Jfr

The Chimney-Corner,

not go in for aristocracy and aristocratic prerogatives,
if they were only sure that they themselves should be
of the privileged class ? To be ' My Lady Duchess/
and to have a right by that simple title to the prostrate
deference of all the lower orders ! How many would
have firmness to vote against such an establishment
merely because it was bad for society ? Tell the fair
Mrs. Feathercap, *In order that you may be a duchess,
and 'have everything a paradise of elegance and Jux-
ury around you and your children, a hundred pooi
families must have no chance for anything better than
black bread and muddy water all their lives, a hun-
dred poor men must work all their lives on such wages
that a fortnight's sickness will send their families to
the almshouse, and that no amount of honesty and
forethought can lay up any provision for old age.' "

" Come now, sir," said Jennie, " don't tell me that
there are any girls or women so mean and selfish as
to want aristocracy or rank so purchased ! You are
too bad, Mr. Theophilus ! "

" Perhaps they might not, were it stated in just
these terms ; yet I think, if the question of the estab-
lishment of an order of aristocracy among us were put
to vote, we should find more women than men who
would go for it ; and they would flout at the conse-
quences to society with the lively wit and the musical
laugh which make feminine selfishness so genteel and
agreeable.

A Family-Talk on ReconstritctiofL 83

" No ! It is a fact, that, in America, the women,
in the wealthy classes, are like the noblemen of aris-
tocracies, and the men are the workers. And in all
this outcry that has been raised about women's wages
being inferior to those of men there is one thing over-
looked, — and that is, that women's work is generally
inferior to that of men, because in every rank they are
the pets of society, and are excused from the laborious
drill and training by which men are fitted for their
callings. Our fair friends come in generally by some
royal road to knowledge, which saves them the dire
necessity of real work, — a sort of feminine hop-skip-
and-jump into science or mechanical skill, — nothing
like the uncompromising hard labor to which the boy
is put who would be a mechanic or farmer, a lawyer
or physician.

" I admit freely that we men are to blame for most
of the faults of our fair nobility. There is plenty of
heroism, abundance of energy, and love of noble
endeavor lying dormant in these sheltered and petted
daughters of the better classes ; but we keep it down
and smother it. Fathers and brothers think it dis-
creditable to themselves not to give their daughters
and sisters the means of living in idleness ; and any
adventurous fair one, who seeks to end the ennui of
utter aimlessness by applying herself to some occupa-
tion whereby she may earn her own living, infallibly

84

The Chimney-Comer,

draws down on her the comments of her whole circle :
— ' Keeping school, is she ? Is n't her father rich
enough to support her? What could possess her?"'

" I am glad, my dear Sir Oracle, that .you are
beginning to recollect yourself and temper your severi-
ties on our sex," said my wife. " As usual, there is
much truth lying about loosely in the vicinity of your
assertions ; but they are as far from being in them-
selves the truth as would be their exact opposites.

" The class of American women who travel, live
abroad, and represent our country to the foreign eye,
have acquired the reputation of being Sybarites in
luxury and extravagance, and there is much in the
modes of life that are creeping into our richer circles
to justify this.

" Miss Murray, ex-maid-of-honor to the Queen of
England, among other impressions which she received
from an extended tour through our country, states it
as her conviction that young American girls of the
better classes are less helpful in nursing the sick and
in the general duties of family life than the daughters
of the aristocracy of England ; and I am inclined to
believe it, because even the Queen has taken special
pains to cultivate habits of energy and self-helpfulness
in her children. One of the toys of the Princess
Royal was said to be a cottage of her own, furnished
with every accommodation for cooking and house-

A Family-Talk on Rcconstniction, 85

keeping, where she from time to time enacted the part
of housekeeper, making bread and biscuit, boihng
potatoes which she herself had gathered from her own
garden-patch, and inviting her royal parents to meals
of her own preparing ; and report says, that the digni-
taries of the German court have been horrified at the
energetic determination of the young royal housekeeper
to overlook her own linen-closets and attend to her
own affairs. But as an offset to what I have been say-
ing, it must be admitted that America is a country where
a young woman can be self-supporting without forfeit-
ing her place in society. AH our New England and
Western towns show us female teachers who are as
well received and as much caressed in society, and as
often contract advantageous marriages, as any women
whatever ; and the productive labor of American
women, in various arts, trades, and callings, would be
found, I think, not inferior to that of any women in
the world.

^' Furthermore, the history of the late war has shown
them capable of every form of heroic endeavor. We
have had hundreds of Florence Nightingales, and an
amount of real hard work has been done by female
hands not inferior to that performed by men in the
camp and field, and enough to make sure that Ameri-
can .womanhood is not yet so enervated as seriously
to interfere with the prospects of free republican
society."

86

The Chimney-Corner,

" I wonder," said Jennie, " what it is in our country
that spoils the working-classes that come into it.
They say that the emigrants, as they land here, are
often simple-hearted people, willing to work, accus-
tomed to early hours and plain living, decorous and
respectful in their manners. It would seem as if
aristocratic drilling had done them good. In a few
months they become brawling, impertinent, grasping,
want high wages, and are very unwilling to work. I
went to several intelligence-offices the other day to
look for a girl for Marianne, and I thought, by the
way the candidates catechized the ladies, and the airs
they took upon them, that they considered themselves
the future mistresses interrogating their subordinates.

" ^ Does ye expect me to do the washin' with the
cookin' ? '

"^Yes.^

" ' Thin I '11 niver go to that place ! '
^ " ' And does ye expect me to get the early breakfast
for yer husband to be off in the train every mornin' ? '

"*Yes.'

" ' I niver does that, — that ought to be a second
girl's work.'

" ' How many servants does ye keep, ma'am ? '
" ' Two.'

" * I niver lives with people that keeps but two ser-
vants.'

A Family-Talk on Reconstruction. 87

" ^ How many has ye in yer family
" ' Seven.'

" ' That 's too large a family. Has ye much com-
pany 1 '

" * Yes, we have company occasionally.*
"^Thin I can't come to ye; it'll be too harrd a
place.'

" In fact, the thing they were all in quest of seemed
to be a very small family, with very high wages, and
many perquisites and privileges.

" This is the kind of work-people our manners and
institutions make of people that come over here. I
remember one day seeing a coachman touch his cap
to his mistress when she spoke to him, as is the way
in Europe, and hearing one or two others saying
among themselves, —

" ' That chap 's a greenie ; he '11 get over that
soon.

" All these things show," said I, " that the staff of
power has passed from the hands of gentility into
thos^e of labor. We may think the working-classes
somewhat unseemly in their assertion of self-impor-
tance ; but, after all, are they, considering their infe-
nVr advantages of breeding, any more overbearing and
iT.ipertinent than the upper classes have always been
<o them in all ages and countries ?

" When Biddy looks long, hedges in her work with

88

The Chwiney-Corner,

many conditions, and is careful to get the most she
can for the least labor, is she, after all, doing any more
than you or I or all the rest of the world ? I myself
Avill not write articles for five dollars a page, when
there are those who will give me fifteen. I would not
do double duty as an editor on a salary of seven
thousand, when I could get ten thousand for less
work.

" Biddy and her mistress are two human beings,
with the same human wants. Both want to escape
trouble, to make their life comfortable and easy, with
the least outlay of expense. Biddy's capital is her
muscles and sinews ; and she wants to get as many
greenbacks in exchange for them as her wit and
shrewdness will enable her to do. You feel, when
you bargain with her, that she is nothing to -you,
except so far as her strength and knowledge may save
you care and trouble ; and she feels that you are
nothing to her, except so far as she can get your
money for her work. The free-and-easy airs of those
seeking employment show one thing, — that the
country in general is prosperous, and that openings
for profitable employment are so numerous that it is
not thought necessary to try to concihate favor. If
the community were at starvation-point, and the loss
of a situation brought fear of the almshouse, the
laboring-class would be more subservient. As it is,

A FaiTiily-Talk on Rcconstmction, 89

there is a little spice of the bitterness of a past age of
servitude in their present attitude, ■ — a brisding, self-
defensive impertinence, which will gradually smooth
away as society learns to accommodate itself to the.
new order of things."

" Well, but, papa," said Jennie, " don't you think all
this a very severe test, if applied to us women particu-
larly, more than to the men ? Mr. Theophilus seems
to think women are aristocrats, and go for enslaving
the lower classes out of mere selfishness ; but I say
that we are a great deal more strongly tempted than
men, because all these annoyances and trials of do-
mestic life come upon us. It is very insidious, the
aristocratic argument, as it appeals to us ; there seems
much to be said in its favor. It does appear to me
that it is better to have servants and work-people
tidy, industrious, respectful, and decorous, as they are
in Europe, than domineering, impertinent, and negli-
gent, as they are here, — and it seems that there is
something in our institutions that produces these dis-
agreeable traits ; and I presume that the negroes will
eventually be travelling the same road as the Irish,
and from the same influences.

" When people see all these things, and feel all the
inconveniences of them, I don't wonder that -they are
tempted not to like democracy, and to feel as if
aristocratic institutions made a more agreeable state

90 The Chimney-Corner.

of society. It is not such a blank, bald, downright
piece of brutal selfishness as Mr. Theophilus there
seems to suppose, for us to wish there were some
quiet, submissive, laborious lower class, who would be
content to work for kind treatment and moderate
wages."

" But, my little dear," said I, " the matter is not left
to our choice. AVish it or not wish it, it ^s what we
evidently can't have. The day for that thing is past.
The power is passing out of the hands of the culti-
vated few into those of the strong, laborious many.
Numbers is the king of our era ; and he will reign
over us, whether we will hear or whether we will for-
bear. The sighers for an obedient lower class and
the mourners for slavery may get ready their crape,
and have their pocket-handkerchiefs bordered with
black ; for they have much weeping to do, and for
many years to come. The good old feudal times,
when two thirds of the population thought themselves
born only for the honor, glory, and profit of the other
third, are gone, with all their beautiful devotions, all
their trappings of song and story. In the land where
such institutions were most deeply rooted and most
firmly established, they are assailed every day by hard
hands and stout hearts ; and their position resembles
that of some of the picturesque ruins of Italy, which
are constantly being torn away to build prosaic mod-
ern shops and houses.

A Family -Talk on Reconstruction, 91

" This great democratic movement is coming down
into modern society with a march as irresistible as the
glacier moves down from the mountains. Its front is
in America, — and behind are England, France, Italy,
Prussia, and the Mohammedan countries. In all, the
rights of the laboring masses are a living force, bear-
ing slowly and inevitably all before it. Our war has
been a marshalling of its armies, commanded by a
hard-handed, inspired man of the working-class. An
intelligent American, recently resident in Egypt, says
it was affecting to notice the interest with which the
w^orking - classes there were looking upon our late
struggle in America, and the earnestness of their
wishes for the triumph of the Union. 'It is our
cause, it is for us,' they said, as said the cotton-spin-
ners of England and the silk-weavers of Lyons. The
forces of this mighty movement are still directed by a
man from the lower orders, the sworn foe of exclusive
privileges and landed aristocracies. If Andy Johnson
is consistent with himself, with the principles which
raised him from a tailor's bench to the head of a
mighty nation, he will see to it that the work that
Lincoln began is so thoroughly done, that every man
and every woman in America, of whatever race or
complexion, shall have exactly equal rights before the
law, and be free to rise or fall according to their indi-
vidual intelligence, industry, and moral worth. So

92 The CJiimney-Comer,

long as everything is not strictly in accordance with
our principles of democracy, so long as there is in any
part of the country an aristocratic upper class who
despise labor, and a laboring lower class that is de-
nied equal political rights, so long this grinding and
discord between the two will never cease in America.
It will make trouble not only in the South, but in the
North, — trouble between all employers and em-
ployed, — trouble in every branch and department of
labor, — trouble in every parlor and every kitchen.

" What is it that has driven every American woman
out of domestic service, when domestic service is full
as well paid, is easier, healthier, and in many cases far
more agreeable, than shop and factory work? It is,
more than anything else, the influence of slavery in
the South, — its insensible influence on the minds of
mistresses, giving them false ideas of what ought to
be the position and treatment of a female citizen in
domestic service, and its very marked influence on
the minds of freedom-loving Americans, causing them
to choose any position rather than one which is re-
garded as assimilating them to slaves. It is diflicult
to say what are the very worst results of a system so
altogether bad as that of slavery ; but one of the worst
is certainly the utter contempt it brings on useful
labor, and the consequent utter physical and moral
degradation of a large body of the whites ; and this

A Family 'Talk on Reconsinictio7t, 93

contempt of useful labor has been constantly spread-
ing Ifke an infection from the Southern to the North-
ern States, particularly among women, who, as our
friend here has truly said, are by our worship and
exaltation of, them made peculiarly liable to take the
malaria of aristocratic society. Let anybody observe
the conversation in good society for an hour or two,
and hear the tone in which servant-girls, seamstresses,
mechanics, and all who work for their living, are
sometimes mentioned, and he will see, that, while
every one of the speakers professes to regard useful
labor as respectable, she is yet deeply imbued with
the leaven of aristocratic ideas.

"In the South the contempt for labor bred of
slavery has so permeated society, that we see great,
coarse, vulgar lazzaroni lying about in rags and ver-
min, and dependent on government rations, maintain-
ing, as their only source of self-respect, that they
never have done and never will do a stroke of useful
work, in all their lives. In the North there are, I
believe, no 7nen who would make such a boast ; but I
think there are many women — beautiful, fascinating
lazzaroni of the parlor and boudoir — who make their
boast of elegant helplessness and utter incompetence
for any of woman's duties with equal naivete. The
Spartans made their slaves drunk, to teach their chil-
dren the evils of intoxication ; and it seems to be the

94

The Chimney-Corner.

policy of a large class in the South now to keep down
and degrade the only working-class they have, for the
sake of teaching their children to despise work.

" We of the North, who know the dignity of labor,
who know the value of free and equal institutions,
who have enjoyed advantages for seeing their opera-
tion, ought, in true brotherliness, to exercise the
power given us by the present position of the people
of the Southern States, and put things thoroughly
right for them, well knowing, that, though they may
not like it at the moment, they will like it in the end,
and that it will bring them peace, plenty, and settled
prosperity, such as they have long envied here in the
North. It is no kindness to an invalid brother, half
recovered from delirium, to leave him a knife to cut
his throat with, should he be so disposed. We should
rather appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober, and
do real kindness, trusting to the future for our meed
of gratitude.

Giving equal political rights to all the inhabitants
of the Southern States will be their shortest way to
quiet and to wealth. It will avert what is else almost
certain, — a war of races ; since all experience shows
that the ballot introduces the very politest relations
between the higher and lower classes. If the right be
restricted, let it be by requirements of property and
education, applying to all the population equally.

A Family -Talk on Reconstniction, 95

"Meanwhile, we citizens and citizenesses of the
North should remember that Reconstruction means
something more than setting things right in the South-
ern States. We have saved our government and
institutions, but we have paid a fearful price for their
salvation ; and we ought to prove now that they are
worth the price.

" The empty chair, never to be filled, — the light
gone out on its candlestick, never on earth to be
rekindled, — gallant souls that have exhaled to heaven
in slow torture and starvation, — the precious blood
that has drenched a hundred battle-fields, — all call
to us with warning voices, and tell us not to let such
sacrifices be in vain. They call on us by our clear
understanding of the great principles of democratic
equality, for which our martyred brethren suffered and
died, to show to all the world that their death was no
mean and useless waste, but a glorious investment for
the future of mankind.

^'This war, these sufferings, these sacrifices, ought
to make every American man and woman look on
himself and herself as belonging to a royal priesthood,
a peculiar people. The blood of our slain ought to
be a gulf, wide and deep as the Atlantic, dividing
us from the opinions and the practices of countries
whose government and society are founded on other
and antagonistic ideas. Democratic republicanism

>

96

The Chhnney-Corner,

has never yet been perfectly worked out either in this
or any other country. It is a splendid edifice, half
built, deformed by rude scaffolding, noisy with the
clink of trowels, blinding the eyes with the dust of
lime, and endangering our heads with falling brick.
We make our way over heaps of shavings and lumber
to view the stately apartments, — we endanger our
necks in climbing ladders standing in the place of
future staircases ; but let us not for all this cry out
that the old rat-holed mansions of former ages, with
their mould, and moss, and cockroaches, are better
than this new palace. There is no lime-dust, no clink
of trowels, no rough scaffolding there, to be sure, and
life goes on very quietly ; but there is the foul air of
slow and sure decay.

Republican institutions in America are in a tran-
sition state j they have not yet separated themselves
from foreign and antagonistic ideas and traditions,
derived from old countries ; and the labors necessary
for the upbuilding of society are not yet so adjusted
that there is mutual pleasure and comfort in the
relations of employer and employed. We still incline
to class-distinctions and aristocracies. We incline to
the scheme of dividing the world's work into two
orders : first, physical labor, which is held to be rude
and vulgar, and the province of a lower class ; and
second, brain labor, held to be refined and aristo-

A Family -Talk on Reconsimction, 97

cratic, and the province of a higher class. Mean-
while, the Creator, who is the greatest of levellers,
has given to every human being both a physical sys-
tem, needing to be kept in order by physical labor,
and an intellectual or brain power, needing to be kept
in order by brain labor. Work^ use, employment, is
the condition of health in both ; and he who works
either to the neglect of the other lives but a half-life,
and is an imperfect human being.

" The aristocracies of the Old World claim that
their only labor should be that of the brain ; and they
keep their physical system in order by violent exer-
cise, which is made genteel* from the fact only that it
is not useful or productive. It would be losing caste
to refresh the muscles by handling the plough or the
axe ; and so foxes and hares must be kept to be
hunted, and whole counties turned into preserves, in
order that the nobility and gentry may have physical
exercise in a way befitting their station, — that is to
say, in a way that produces nothing, and does good
only to themselves.

"The model republican uses his brain for the
highest purposes of brain work, and his muscles in
productive physical labor ; and useful labor he respects
above that which is merely agreeable.

" When this equal respect for physical and mental
labor shall have taken possession of every American
5 G

98 The Chininey-Corner,

citizen, there will be no so-called laboring class;
there will no more be a class all muscle without brain
power to guide it, and a class all brain without mus-
cular power to execute. The labors of society will
be lighter, because each individual will take his part
in them ; they wdll be performed better, because no
one will be overburdened.

"In those days, Miss Jennie, it will be an easier
matter to keep house, because, housework being no
longer regarded as degrading drudgery, you will find
a superior class of women ready to engage in it.

Every young girl and woman, who in her sphere
and by her example shows that she is not ashamed
of domestic labor, and that she considers the neces-
sary work and duties of family life as dignified and
important, is helping to bring on this good day.
Louis Philippe once jestingly remarked, — M have
this qualification for being a king in these days, that
I have blacked my own boots, and could black them
again.'

" Every American ought to cultivate, as his pride
and birthright, the habit of self-helpfulness. Our
command of the labors of good employes in any de-
partment is liable to such interruptions, that he who
has blacked his own boots, and can do it again, is, on
the whole, likely to secure the most comfort in life.
As to that which Mr. Ruskin pronounces to be a

A Family -Talk on Reconstruction, 99

deep, irremediable ulcer in society, namely, domestic
service, we hold that the last workings of pure democ-
racy will cleanse and heal it. When right ideas are
sufficiently spread, — when everybody is self-helpful
and capable of being self-supporting,' — when there is
a fair start for every human being in the race of life,
and all its prizes are, without respect of persons, to
be obtained by the best runner, — when every kind
of useful labor is thoroughly respected, — then there
will be a clear, just, wholesome basis of intercourse
on which employers and employed can move without
wrangling or discord.

" Renouncing all claims to superiority on the one
hand, and all thought of servility on the other, service
can be rendered by fair contracts and agreements,
with that mutual respect and benevolence which
every human being owes to every other.

" But for this transition period, which is wearing
out the life of so many women, and making so many
households uncomfortable, I have some alleviating
suggestions, which I shall give in my next chapter."

#

IV.

IS WOMAN A WORKER?

" T)APA, do you see what the Evening Post says
-L of your New-Year's article on Reconstruc-
tion?'' said Jennie, as we were all sitting in the
library after tea.

" I have not seen it."

"Well, then, the charming writer, whoever he is,
takes up for us girls and women, and maintains that
no work of any sort ought to be expected of us ; that
our only mission in life is to be beautiful, and to
refresh and elevate the spirits of men by being so.
If I get a husband, my mission is to be always be-
comingly dressed, to display most captivating toi-
lettes, and to be always in good spirits, — as, under
the circumstances, I always should be, — and thus
* renew his spirits ' when he comes in weary with the
toils of' life. Household cares are to be far from
me : they destroy my cheerfulness aKid injure my
beauty.

Is Woman a Worker? loi

"He says that the New England standard of ex-
cellence as applied to woman has been a mistaken
one j and, in consequence, though the girls are beau-
tiful, the matrons are faded, overworked, and unin-
teresting ; ai)d that such a state of ^ society tends to
immorality, because, when wives are no longer charm-
ing, men are open to the temptation to desert their
firesides, and get into mischief generally. He seems
particularly to complain of your calling ladies who
do nothing the 'fascinating lazzaroni of the parlor
and boudoir.' "

"There was too much truth back of that arrow
not to wound," said Theophilus Thoro, who was en-
sconced, as usual, in his dark corner, whence he
supervises om* discussions.

"Come, Thoro, we won't have any of your
bitter moralities," said Jennie 3 " they are only to
be taken as the invariable bay-leaf which Professor
Blot introduces into all his recipes for soups and
stews, — a little elegant bitterness, to be kept taste-
fully in the background. You see now, papa, I
should like the vocation of being beautiful. It would
just suit me to wear point -lace and jewelry, and to
have life revolve round me, as some beautiful star,
and feel that I had nothing to do but shine and re-
fresh the spirits of all gazers, and that in this way I
was truly useful, and fulfilling the great end of my

102

The Chininey-Corner,

being ; but alas for this doctrine ! all women have
not beauty. The most of us can only hope not to
be called ill-looking, and, when we get ourselves up
with care, to look fresh and trim and agreeable;
which fact interferes with the theory/'

"Well, for my part," said young Rudolph, "I go
for the theory of the beautiful. If ever I marry, it
is to find an asylum for ideality. I don't want to
make a culinary marriage or a business partnership.
I w^ant a being whom I can keep in a sphere of
poetry and beauty, out of the dust and grime of every-
day life."

"Then," said Mr. Theophilus, "you must either
be a rich man in your own right, or your fair ideal
must have a handsome fortune of her own."

"I never will marry a rich wife," quoth Rudolph.
" My wife must be supported by me, not I by her.'*

Rudolph is another of the habitues of our chim-
ney-corner, representing the order of young knight-
hood in America, and his dreams and fancies, if
imjDracticable, are always of a kind to make every
one think him a good felloAV. He ,who has no ro-
mantic dreams at twenty-one will be a horribly dry
peascod at fifty; therefore it is that I gaze rever-
ently at all Rudolph's chateaus in Spain, which
want nothing to complete them except solid earth
to stand on.

Is Woman a Worker? 103

" And pray," said Theophilus, " how long will it
lake a young lawyer or physician, starting with no
heritage but his own brain, to create a sphere of
poetry and beauty in which to keep his goddess?
How much a year will be necessary, as the English
say, to do this garden of Eden, whereinto shall enter
only the poetry of life ? "

"I don't know. I haven't seen it near enough
to consider. It is because I know the difficulty of
its attainment that I have no present thoughts of
marriage. Marriage is to me in the bluest of all
blue distances, — far off, mysterious, and dreamy as
the Mountains of the Moon or sources of the Nile.
It shall come only when I have secured a fortune
that shall place my wife above all necessity of work
or care."

" I desire to hear from you," said Theophilus,
" when you have found the sum that will keep a
woman from care. I know of women now inhabit-
ing palaces, waited on at every turn by servants, with
carriages, horses, jewels, laces, cashmeres, enough
for princesses, who are eaten up by care. One lies
awake all night on account of a wrinkle in the waist
of her dress ; another is dying because no silk of a
certain inexpressible shade is to be found in New
York ; a third has had a dress sent home, which
has proved such a failure that life seems no longer

104

The Chimney-Corner.

worth having. If it were not for the consolations of
rehgion, one does n't know what would become of
her. The fact is, that care and labor are as much
correlated to human existence as shadow is to light ;
there is no such thing as excluding them from any
mortal lot. You may miake a canary-bird or a gold-
fish live in absolute contentment without a care or
labor, but a human being you cannot. Human be-
ings are restless and active in their very nature, and
will do something, and that something will prove a
care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will.
As long as there is anything to be desired and not
yet attained, so long its attainment will be attempted ;
so long as that attainment is doubtful or difficult,
so long will there be care and anxiety. When bound-
less wealth releases woman from every family care,
she immediately makes herself a new set of- cares
in another direction, and has just as many anxieties
as the most toilful housekeeper, only they are of a
different kind. Talk of labor, and look at the upper
classes in London or in New York in the fashionable
season. Do any women work harder ? To rush from
crowd to crowd all night, night after night, seeing
what they are tired of, making the agreeable over
an abyss of inward yawning, crowded, jostled, breathy
ing hot air, and crushed in halls and stairways, with-
out a moment of leisure for months and months, till

Is Woman a Worker?

105

brain and nerve and sense reel, and the country is
longed for as a period of resuscitation and relief!
Such is the release from labor and fatigue brought
by wealth. The only thing that makes all this labor
at all endurable is, that it is utterly and entirely use-
less, and does no good to any one in creation ; this
alone makes it genteel, and distinguishes it from the
vulgar toils of a housekeeper. These delicate crea-
tures, who can go to three or four parties a night
for three months, would be utterly desolate if they
had to watch one night in a sick-room ; and though
they can exhibit any amount of physical endurance
and vigor in crowding into assembly rooms, and
breathe tainted air in an opera-house with the most
martyr-like constancy, they could not sit one half-
hour in the close room where the sister of charity
spends hours in consoling the sick or aged poor."

" Mr. Theophilus is quite at home now," said Jen-
nie ; " only start him on the track of fashionable life,
and he takes the course like a hound. But hear,
now, our champion of the Evening Past: —

"'The instinct of women to seek a life of repose,
their eagerness to attain the life of elegance, does not
mean contempt for labor, but it is a confession of
unfitness for labor. Women were not intended to
work, — not because work is ignoble, but because it
is as disastrotis to the beauty of a woman as is firic-
5*

io6 The Chimney-Comer,

tion to the bloom and softness of a flower. Woman
is to be kept in the garden of life ; she is to rest, to
receive, to praise ; she is to be kept from the work-
shop world, where innocence is snatched with rude
hands, and softness is blistered into unsightliness or
hardened into adamant. No social truth is more in
need of exposition and illustration than this one ;
and, above all, the people of New England need to
knov/ it, and, better, they need to believe it.

" ' It is therefore with regret that we discover Chris-
topher Crowfield applying so harshly, and, as we think
so indiscriminatingly, the theory of work to women,
and teaching a society made up of women sacrificed
in the workshops of the state, or to the dust-pans and
kitchens of the house, that women must work, ought
to work, and are dishonored if they do not work ; and
that a woman committed to the drudgery of a house-
hold is more creditably employed than when she is
charming, fascinating, irresistible, in the parlor or
boudoir. The consequence of this fatal mistake is
manifest throughout New England, — in New Eng-
land, where the girls are all beautiful and the wives
and mothers faded, disfigured, and without charm or
attractiveness. The moment a girl marries in New
England she is apt to become a drudge, or a lay figure
on which *to exhibit the latest fashions. She never
has beautiful hands, and she would not have a beauti-

Is Woman a Worker f 107

ful face if a utilitarian society could " apply " her face
to anything but 'the pleasure of the eye. Her hands
lose their shape and softness after childhood, and
domestic drudgery destroys her beauty of form and
softness and bloom of complexion after marriage. To
correct, or rather to break up, this despotism of
household cares, or of work, over woman, American
society must be taught that women will inevitably f^ide
and deteriorate, unless it insures repose and comfort
to them. It must be taught that reverence for beauty
is the normal condition, while the theory of work,
applied to women, is disastrous alike to beauty and
morals. Work, when it is destructive to men or wo-
men, is forced and unjust.

" ' All the great masculine or creative epochs have
been distinguished by spontaneous work on the part
of men, and universal reverence and care for beauty.
The praise of work, and sacrifice of women to this
great heartless devil of work, belong only to, and are
the social doctrine of, a mechanical age and a utilita-
rian epoch. And if the New England idea of social
life continues to bear so cruelly on woman, we shall
have a reaction somewhat unexpected and shocking.' "

"Well now, say what you will," said Rudolph, "you
have expressed my idea of the conditions of the sex.
Woman was not made to work ; she was made to be
taken care of by man. All that is severe and trying.

lo8 The Chimney-Corner,

whether in study or in practical life, is and ought to
be in its very nature essentially the work of the male
sex. The value of woman is precisely the value of
those priceless works of art for which we build mu-
seums,—which we shelter and guard as the world's
choicest heritage ; and a lovely, cultivated, refined
woman, thus sheltered, and guarded, and developed,
has a wwth that cannot be estimated by any gross,
material standard. So I subscribe to the sentiments
of Miss Jennie's friend without scruple."

" The great trouble in settling all these society ques-
tions," said I, lies in the gold-washing, — the cra-
dling I think the miners call it. If all the quartz were
in one stratum and all the gold in another, it would
save us a vast deal of trouble. In the ideas of Jen-
nie's friend of the Evening Post there is a line of
truth and a line of falsehood so interwoven, and
threaded together that it is impossible wholly to as-
sent or dissent. So with your ideas, Rudolph, there
is a degree of truth in them, but there is also a fal-
lacy.

" It is a truth, that woman as a sex ought not to do
the hard w^ork of the world, either social, intellectual,
or moral. There are evidences in her physiology that
this was not intended for her, and our friend of the
Evening Post is right in saying that any country will
advance more rapidly in civilization and refinement

Is Woman a Worker? 109

where woman is thus sheltered and protected. And I
think, furthermore, that there is no country in the
world where women are so much considered and cared
for and sheltered, in every walk of life, as in America.
In England and France, — all over the continent of
Europe, in fact, — the other sex are deferential to
women only from some presumption of their social
standing, or from the fact of acquaintanceship ; but
among strangers, and under circumstances where no
particular rank or position can be inferred, a woman
travelling in England or France is jostled and pushed
to the wall, and left to take her own chance, precisely
as if she were not a woman. Deference to delicacy
and weakness, the instinct of protection, does not ap-
jDear to characterize the masculine population of any
other quarter of the world so much as that of America.
In France, les Messieurs will form a circle round the
fire in the receiving-room of a railroad station, and sit,
tranquilly smoking their cigars, while ladies who do
not happen to be of their acquaintance are standing
shivering at the other side of the room. In England,
if a lady is incautiously booked for an outside place
on a coach, in hope of seeing the scenery, and the
day turns out hopelessly rainy, no gentleman in the
coach below ever thinks of offering to change seats
with her, though it pour torrents. In America, the
roughest backwoods steamboat or canal-boat captain

no

The Chimney-Corner.

always, • as a matter of course, considers himself
charged with the protection of the ladies. * Place aux
dames'* is written in the heart of many a shaggy fellow
who could not utter a French word any more than
could a buffalo. It is just as I have before said, —
women are the recognized aristocracy, the only aris-
tocracy, of America ; and, so far from regarding this
fact as objectionable, it is an unceasing source of
pride in my country.

"That kind of knightly feeling towards woman
which reverences her delicacy, her frailty, which pro-
tects and cares for her, is, I think, the crown of man-
hood ; and without it a man is only a rough animal.
But our fair aristocrats and their knightly defenders
need to be cautioned lest they lose their position, as
many privileged orders have before done, by an arro-
gant and selfish use of power.

" I have said that the vices of aristocracy are more
developed among women in America than among
men, and that, while there are no men in the North-
ern States who are not ashamed of living a merely
idle life of pleasure, there are many women who make
a boast of helplessness and ignorance in woman's
family duties which any man would be ashamed to
make with regard to man's duties, as if such helpless-
ness and ignorance were a grace and a charm.

" There are women who contentedly live on, year

Is Woman a Worker?

Ill

after year, a life of idleness, while the husband and
father is straining every nerve, growing prematurely
old and gray, abridged of almost every form of recre-
ation or pleasure, — all that he may ' keep them in a
state of careless ease and festivity. It may be very
fine, very generous, very knightly, in the man who
thus toils at the oar that his princesses may enjoy
their painted voyages ; but what is it for the women ?

" A woman is a moral being — an immortal soul
— before she is a woman ; and as such she is charged
by her Maker with some share of the great burden of
work which lies on the world.

" Self-denial, the bearing of the cross, are stated by
Christ as indispensable conditions to the entrance into
his kingdom, and no exception is made for man or
woman. Some task, some burden, some cross, each
one must carry; and there must be something done
in every true and worthy life, not as amusement, but
as duty, — not as play, but as earnest work, — and no
human being can attain to the Christian standard
without this.

When Jesus Christ took a towel and girded him-
self, poured water into a basin, and washed his dis-
ciples' feet, he performed a significant and sacrament-
al act, which no man or woman should ever forget.
If wealth and rank and power absolve from the ser-
vices of life, then certainly were Jesus Christ absolved,

1 12 The Chimney-Corner.

as he says, — ^ Ye call me Master, and Lord. If I,
then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye
also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have
given you an example, that ye should do as I have
done to you.'

" Let a man who seeks to make a terrestrial para-
dise for the woman of his heart, — to absolve her
from all care, from all labor, — to teach her to accept
and to receive the labor of others without any attempt
to offer labor in return, — consider whether he is not
thus going directly against the fundamental idea of
Christianity, — taking the direct way to make his idol
selfish and exacting, to rob her of the highest and
noblest beauty of womanhood.

In that chapter of the Bible where the relation
between man and woman is stated, it is thus said,
with quaint simplicity : ^ It is not good that the
man should be alone ; I will make him an help meet
for him.' Woman the helper of man, not his toy, —
not a picture, not a statue, not a work of art, but a
HELPER, a doer, — such is the view of the Bible and
the Christian religion.

" It is not necessary that women should work phys-
ically or morally to an extent which impairs beauty.
In France, where woman is harnessed with an ass to
the plough which her husband drives, — where she
digs, and wields the pickaxe, — she becomes jDrema-

Is Woman a Worker? 113

turely hideous j but in America, where woman reigns
as queen in every household, she may surely be a
good and thoughtful housekeeper, she may have phys-
ical strength exercised in lighter domestic toils, not
only without injuring her beauty, but .with manifest
advantage to it. Almost every growing young girl
would be the better in health, and therefore hand-
somer, for two hours of active housework daily ; and
the habit of usefulness thereby gained would be an
equal advantage to her moral development. The
labors of modern, well-arranged houses are not in any
sense severe ; they are as gentle as any kind of exer-
cise that can be devised, and they bring into play
muscles that ought to be exercised to be healthily de-
veloped.

" The great danger to the beauty of American wo-
men does not lie, as the writer of the Post contends,
in an overworking of the physical system which shall
stunt and deform ; on the contrary, American women
of the comfortable classes are in danger of a loss of
physical beauty from the entire deterioration of the
muscular system for want of exercise. Take the life
of any American girl in one of our large towns, and
see what it is. We have an educational system of
public schools which for intellectual culture is a just
matter of pride to any country. From the time that
the girl is seven years old, her first thought, when

H

114

The Chimney-CorneK

she rises in the morning, is to eat her breakfast and
be off to her school. There really is no more time
than enough to allow her to make that complete toilet
which every well-bred female ought to make, and to
take her morning meal before her school begins. She
returns at noon with just time to eat her dinner, and
the afternoon session begins. She comes home at
night with books, slate, and lessons enough to occupy
her evening. What time is there for teaching her any
household work, for teaching her to cut or fit or sew,
or to inspire her with any taste for domestic duties ?
Her arms have no exercise ; her chest and lungs, and
all the complex system of muscles which are to be
perfected by quick and active movement, are com-
pressed while she bends over book and slate and
drawing-board ; while the ever-active brain is kept all
the while going at the top of its speed. She- grows
up spare, thin, and delicate ; and while theTrish girl,
who sweeps the parlors, rubs the silver, and irons the
muslins, is developing a finely rounded arm and bust,
the American girl has a pair of bones at her sides,
and a bust composed of cotton padding, the work of a
skilful dress-maker. Nature, who is no respecter of
persons, gives to Colleen Bawn, who uses her arms
and chest, a beauty which perishes in the gentle, lan-
guid Edith, who does nothing but study and read."
" But is it not a fact," said Rudolph, " as stated by

Is Woman a Worker? 115

our friend of tKe Post, that American matrons are
perishing, and their beauty and grace all withered,
from overwork ?

"It is," said my wife; "but why? It is because
they are brought up without vigor or muscular
strength, without the least practical experience of
household labor, or those means of saving it which
come by daily practice ; and then, after marriage,
when physically weakened by maternity, embarrassed
by the care of young children, they are often suddenly
deserted by every efficient servant, and the whole
machinery of a complicated household left in their
weak, inexperienced hands. In the country, you see
a household perhaps made void some fine morning by
Biddy's sudden departure, and nobody to make the
bread, or cook the steak, or sweep the parlors, or do
one of the complicated offices of a family, and no
bakery, cook-shop, or laundry to turn to for alleviation.
A lovely, refined home becomes in a few hours a howl-
ing desolation ; and then ensues a long season of
breakage, waste, distraction, as one wild Irish immi-
grant after another introduces the style of Irish cot-
tage life into an elegant dwelling.

" Now suppose I grant to the Evening Post that
woman ought to rest, to be kept in the garden of life,
and all that, hov/ is this to be done in a country where
a state of things like this is the commonest of occur-

Ii6 The Chimney-Corner.

rences ? And is it any kindness or reverence to wo-
man, to educate her for such an inevitable destiny by
a life of complete physical delicacy and incapacity ?
Many a woman who has been brought into these cruel
circumstances would willingly exchange all her knowl-
edge of German and Italian, and all her graceful ac-
complishments, for a good physical development, and
some respectable savoir faire in ordinary life.

" Moreover, American matrons are overworked be-
cause some unaccountable glamour leads them to con-
tinue to bring up their girls in the same inefficient
physical habits which resulted in so much misery to
themselves. Housework as they are obliged to do it,
untrained, untaught, exhausted, and in company with
rude, dirty, unkempt foreigners, seems to them a deg-
radation which they will spare to their daughters.
The daughter goes on with her schools and accom-
plishments, and leads in the family the life of an ele-
gant little visitor during all those years when a young
girl might be gradually developing and strengthening
her muscles in healthy household work. It never
occurs to her that she can or ought to fill any of the
domestic gaps into which her mother always steps ;
and she comforts herself with the thought, ' I don't
know how ; I can't ; I have n't the strength. I caiit
sweep j it blisters my hands. If I should stand at
the ironing-table an hour, I should be ill for a week.

Is Woman a Worker? 117

As to cooking, I don't know anything about it' And
so, when the cook, or the chambermaid, or nurse, or
all together, vacate the premises, it is the mamma who
is successively cook, and chambermaid, and nurse ;
and this is the reason why matrons fade and are over-
worked.

" Now, Mr. Rudolph, do you think a woman any
less beautiful or interesting because she is a fully
developed physical being, — because her muscles
have been rounded and matured into strength, so that
she can meet the inevitable emergencies of life with-
out feeling them to be distressing hardships ? If there
be a competent, well-trained servant to sweep and dust
the parlor, and keep all the machinery of the house in
motion, she may very properly select her work out of
the family, in some form of benevolent helpfulness ;
but when the inevitable evil hour comes, which is
likely to come first or last, in every American house-
hold, is a woman any less an elegant woman because
her love of neatness, order, and beauty leads her to
make vigorous personal exertions to keep her own
home undefiled ? For my part, I think a disorderly,
ill-kept home, a sordid, uninviting table, has driven
more husbands from domestic life than the unattract-
iveness of any overworked woman. So long as a
woman makes her home harmonious and orderly, so
long as the hour of assembling around the family

Ii8 The Chimney 'Corner,

table is something to be looked forward to as a com-
fort and a refreshment, a man cannot see that the
good house fairy, who by some magic keeps every-
thing so delightfully, has either a wrinkle or a gray
hair.

" Besides," said I, " I must tell you, Rudolph, what
you fellows of twenty-one are slow to believe ; and
that is, that the kind of ideal paradise you propose in
marriage, is, in the very nature of things, an impossi-
bility, — that the familiarities of every-day life be-
tween two people who keep house together must and
will destroy it. Suppose you are married to Cytherea
herself, and the next week attacked with a rheumatic
fever. If the tie between you is that of true and
honest love, Cytherea will put on a gingham wrapper,
and with her own sculptured hands wring out the
flannels which shall relieve your pains ; and slie will
be no true woman if she do not prefer to do this to
employing any nurse that could be hired. True love
ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life ; and
homely services rendered for love's sake have in them
a poetry that is immortal.

"No true-hearted woman can find herself, in real,
actual life, unskilled and unfit to minister to the
w^ants and sorrows of those dearest to her, without a
secret sense of degradation. The feeling of useless-
ness is an extremely unpleasant one. Tom Hood, in

Is Woman a Worker? 119

a very humorous paper, describes a most accom-
plished schoolmistress, a teacher of all the arts and
crafts which are supposed to make up fine gentle-
women, who is stranded in a rude German inn, with
her father writhing in the anguish of a severe attack
of gastric inflammation. The helpless lady gazes on
her suffering parent, longing to help him, and think-
ing over all her various little store of accomplish-
ments, not one of which bear the remotest relation to
the case. She could knit him a bead-purse, or make
him a guard-chain, or work him a footstool, or festoon
him with cut tissue-paper, or sketch his likeness, or
crust him over with alum crystals, or stick him over
with little rosettes of red and white wafers ; but none
of these being applicable to his present case, she sits
gazing in resigned imbecility, till finally she desper-
ately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and, after
a laborious turn in the kitchen, — after burning her
dress and blacking -her fingers, — succeeds only in
bringing him a bowl of paste/

" Not unlike this might be the feeling of many an
elegant and accomplished woman, whose education
has taught and practised her in everything fhac
woman ought to know, except those identical ones
which fit her for the care of a home, for the comfort
of a sick-room ; and so I say again, that, whatever a
woman may be in the way of beauty and elegance,

120

The Chimney-Corner.

she must have the strength and skill of a practical
worker J or she is nothing. She is not simply to be the
beautiful, — she is to 77iake the beautiful, and preserve
it ; and she who makes and she who keeps the beau-
tiful must be able to work, and know how to work.
Whatever offices of life are performed by women of
culture and refinement are thenceforth elevated ; they
cease to be mere servile toils, and become expres-
sions of the ideas of superior beings. If a true lady
makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a petit souper
for her invalid friend, she does it as a lady should.
She does not cut blundering and uneven slices ; she
does not burn the edges ; she does not deluge it with
bad butter, and serve it cold; but she arranges and
serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and deli-
cacy, which make it worth one's while to have a lady
friend in sickness.

"And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is
teaching classes of New York ladies that cooking is
not a vulgar kitchen toil, to be left to blundering
servants, but an elegant feminine accomplishment,
better worth a woman's learning than crochet or
embroidery ; and that a well-kept culinary apartment
may be so inviting and orderly that no lady need feel
her ladyhood compromised by participating in its
pleasant toils. I am glad to know that his cooking
academy is thronged with more scholars than he can

Is Woman a Worker?

121

accommodate, and from ladies in the best classes of
society.

Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford,
recently, a public course of instruction in the art of
bread-making has been commenced by a lady, and
that classes of the most respectable young and mar-
ried ladies in the place are attending them.

" These are steps in the right direction, and show
that our fair countrywomen, with the grand good-
sense which is their leading characteristic, are re-
solved to supply whatever in our national life is
wanting.

"I do not fear that women of such sense and
energy will listen to the sophistries which would per-
suade them that elegant imbecility and inefficiency
are charms of cultivated womanhood or ingredients
in the poetry of life. She alone can keep the poetry
and beauty of married life who has this poetry in her
soul ; who with energy and discretion can throw back
and out of sight the sordid and disagreeable details
which beset all human living, and can keep in the
foreground that which is agreeable ; who has enough
knowledge of practical household matters to make
unskilled and rude hands minister to her cultivated
and refined tastes, and constitute her skilled brain
the guide of unskilled hands. From such a home,
with such a mistress, no sirens will seduce a man^
6

122

The Chimney-Corner,

even though the hair grow gray, and the merely
physical charms of early days gradually pass away.
The enchantment that was about her person alone in
the days of courtship seems in the course of years to
have interfused and penetrated the home which she
has created, and which in every detail is only an
expression of her personality. Her thoughts, her
plans, her provident care, are everywhere ; and the
home attracts and holds by a thousand ties the heart
which before marriage was held by the woman alone."

V.

THE TRANSITION.

"'nr^HE fact is, my dear/' said my wife, "that you
-A. have thrown a stone into a congregation of
blackbirds, in writing as you have of our family wars
and wants. The response comes from all parts of the
country, and the task of looking over and answering
your letters becomes increasingly formidable. Every-
body has something to say, — something to propose."
" Give me a resume^' said 1.

" Well," said my wife, " here are three pages from
an elderly gentleman, to the effect that women are
not what they used to be, — that daughters are a
great care and no help, — that girls have no health
and no energy in practical life, — that the expense
of maintaining a household is so great that young men
are afraid to marry, — and that it costs more now per
annum to dress one young woman than it used to
cost to carry a whole family of sons through college.
In short, the poor old gentleman is in a desperate

124

The Chimney-Corner,

state of mind, and is firmly of opinion that society
is going to ruin by an express train."

" Poor old fellow 1 " said I, " the only comfort I can
offer him is what I take myself, — that this sad world
will last out our time at least. Now for the next.''

The next is more concise and spicy," said my
wife. " I will read it.

*^ ' Christopher Crowfield^ Esq.^

^' ^ Sir, — If you want to know how American wo-
men are to be brought back to family work, I can
tell you a short method. Pay them as good wages
for it as they can make in any other way. I get from
seven to nine dollars a week in the shop where I
work ; if I could make the same in any good family,
I should have no objection to doing it.

u c Your obedient servant,

" ' Letitia.' "

]&y correspondent Letitia does not tell me,'' said
I, " how much of this seven or nine dollars she pays
out for board and washing, fire and lights. If she
worked in a good family at two or three dollars a
week, it is easily demonstrable, that, at the present
cost of these items, she would make as much clear
profit as she now does at nine dollars for her shop-
work.

The Transition,

125

"And there are two other things, moreover, which
she does not consider : First, that, besides board,
washing, fuel, and lights, which she ^ would have in
a family, she would have also less unintermitted toil.
Shop-work exatts its ten hours per -diem ; and it
makes no allowance for sickness or accident.

" A good domestic in a good family finds many
hours when she can feel free to attend to her own
affairs. Her work consists of certain definite matters,
which being done her time is her own ; and if she
have skill and address in the management of her
duties, she may secure many leisure hours. As
houses are now built, and with the many labor-saving
conveniences that are being introduced, the physical
labor of housework is no more than a healthy woman
really needs to keep her in health. In case, however,
of those slight illnesses to which all are more or less
liable, and which, if neglected, often lead to graver
ones, the advantage is still on the side of domestic
service. In the shop and factory, every hour of un-
employed time is deducted ; an illness of a day or two
is an appreciable loss of just so much money, while
the expense of board is still going on. But in the
family a good servant is always considered. When
ill, she is carefully nursed as one of the family, has
the family physician, and is subject to no deduction
from her wages for loss of time. I have known more

126

The Chimriey-Corner,

than one instance in which a valued domestic has
been sent, at her employer's expense, to the seaside
or some other pleasant locality, for change of air,
when her health has been run down.

"In the second place, family work is more remu-
nerative, even at a lower rate of wages, than shop
or factory work, because it is better for the health.
All sorts of sedentary employment, pursued by num-
bers of persons together in one apartment, are more
or less debilitating and unhealthy, through foul air
and confinement.

" A woman's health is her capital. In certain ways
of work she obtains more income, but she spends on
her capital to do it. In another way she may get less
income, and yet increase her capital. A woman can-
not work at dress-making, tailoring, or any other sed-
entary employment, ten hours a day, year in and out,
without enfeebling her constitution, impairing her eye-
sight, and bringing on a complication of complaints,
but she can sweep, wash, cook, and do the varied
duties of a well-ordered house with modern arrange-
ments, and grow healthier every year. The times,
in New England, when all women did housework a
part of every day, were the times when all women
were healthy. At present, the heritage of vigorous
muscles, firm nerves, strong backs, and cheerful phys-
ical life has gone from American women^ and is taken

The Transition, 127

up by Irish women. A thrifty young man, I have
lately heard of, married a rosy young Irish girl, quite
to the horror of his mother and sisters, but defended
himself by the following very conclusive logic : ' If
I marry an American girl, I must have an Irish girl
to take care of her ; and I cannot afford to support
both.'

" Besides all this, there is a third consideration,
which I humbly commend to my friend Letitia. The
turn of her note speaks her a girl of good common
sense, with a faculty of hitting the nail square on the
head ; and such a girl must see that nothing is more
likely to fall out than that she will some day be mar-
ried. Evidently, our fair friend is born to rule ; and
at this hour, doubtless, her foreordained throne and
humble servant are somewhere awaiting her.

" Now domestic service is all the while fitting a girl
physically, mentally, and morally for her ultimate
vocation and sphere, — to be a happy wife and to
make a happy home. But factory work, shop work,
and all employments of that sort, are in their nature
essentially undomestic, — entailing the constant ne-
cessity of a boarding-house life, and of habits as dif-
ferent as possible from the quiet routine of home.
The girl who is ten hours on the strain of continued,
unintermitted toil feels no inclination, when evening
comes, to sit down and darn her stockings, or make

128

The Chimney-Corner.

over her dresses, or study any of those multifarious
economies which turn a wardrobe to the best account.
Her nervous system is flagging ; she craves company
and excitement; and her dull, narrow room is de-
serted for some place of amusement or gay street
promenade. And who can blame her ? Let any sen-
sible woman, who has had experience of shop and
factory life, recall to her mind the ways and manners
in which young girls grow up who leave a father's
roof for a crowded boarding-house, without any super-
vision of matron or mother, and ask whether this is
the best school for training young American wives
and mothers.

"Doubtless there are discreet and thoughtful
women who, amid all these difficulties, do keep up
thrifty, womanly habits, but they do it by an effort
greater than the majority of girls are willing to make,
and greater than they ought to make. To sew or
read or study after ten hours of factory or shop w^ork
is a further drain on the nervous powers, which no
woman can long endure without exhaustion.

" When the time arrives that such a girl comes to a
house of her own, she comes to it as unskilled in all
household lore, with muscles as incapable of domestic
labor, and nerves as sensitive, as if she had been lead-
ing the most luxurious, do-nothing, fashionable hfe.
How different would be her jpreparation, had the

The Transition. 129

forming years of her life been spent in the labors of
a family ! I know at this moment a lady at the head
of a rich country establishment, filling her station in
society with dignity and honor, who gained her do-
mestic education in a kitchen in ouj vicinity. She
was the daughter of a small farmer, and when th-e
time came for her to be earning her living, her parents
wisely thought it far better that she should gain it in a
way which would at the same time establish her health
and fit her for her own future home. In a cheerful,
light, airy kitchen, which was kept so tidy always as
to be an attractive sitting-room, she and another
young country-girl were trained up in the best of
domestic economies by a mistress who looked well
to the ways of her household, till at length they mar-
ried from the house with honor, and went to practise
in homes of their own the lessons they had learned in
the home of another. Formerly, in New England,
such instances were not uncommon ; — would that
they might become so again ! "

" The fact is," said my wife, " the places which the
daughters of American farmers used to occupy in our
families are now taken by young girls from the fam-
ilies of small farmers in Ireland. They are respect-
able, tidy, healthy, and capable of being taught. A
good mistress, who is reasonable and liberal in her
treatment, is able to make them fixtures. They get
6* I

130

The Chimney-Corner,

good wages, and have few expenses. They dress

handsomely, have abundant leisure to take care of

their clothes and turn their wardrobes to the best

»

account, and they very soon acquire skill in doing it
equal to that displayed by any women of any country.
They remit money continually to relatives in Ireland,
and from time to time pay the passage of one and
another to this country, — and whole families have
thus been established in American life by the efforts
of one young girl. Now, for my part, I do not
grudge my Irish fellow-citizens these advantages
obtained by honest labor and good conduct; they
deserve all the good fortune thus accruing to them.
But when I see sickly, nervous American women
josthng and struggling in the few crowded avenues
which are open to mere brain, I cannot help thinking
how much better their lot would have been, with good
strong bodies, steady nerves, healthy digestion, and
the habit of looking any kind of work in the face,
which used to be characteristic of American women
generally, and of Yankee women in particular."

The matter becomes still graver," said I, " by the
laws of descent. The woman who enfeebles her
muscular system by sedentary occupation, and over-
stimulates her brain and nervous system, when she
becomes a mother, perpetuates these evils to her
offspring. Her children will be born feeble and deli-

Tlie Transition,

cate, incapable of sustaining any severe strain of body
or mind. The universal cry now about the ill health
of young American girls is the fruit of some three
generations of neglect of physical exercise and undue
stimulus of brain and nerves. Young girls now are
universally born delicate. The most careful hygienic
treatment during childhood, the strictest attention to
diet, dress, and exercise, succeeds merely so far as to
produce a girl who is healthy so long only as she
does nothing. With the least strain, her delicate
organism gives out, now here, now there. She can-
not study without her eyes fail or she has headache,
— she cannot get up her own muslins, or sweep a
room, or pack a trunk, without bringing on a back-
ache, — she goes to a concert or a lecture, and must
lie by all the next day from the exertion. If she
skates, she is sure to strain some muscle ; or if she
falls and strikes her knee or hits her ankle, a blow
that a healthy girl would forget in five minutes termi-
nates in some mysterious lameness which confines
our poor sibyl for months.

" The young American girl of our times is a crea-
ture who has not a particle of vitality to spare, — no
reserved stock of force to draw upon in cases of
family exigency. She is exquisitely strung, she is
cultivated, she is refined ; but she is too nervous, too
wiry, too sensitive, — she burns away too fast ; only

132 The Chimney-Corner,

the easiest of circumstances, the most watchful of
care and nursing, can keep her within the limits of
comfortable health; and yet this is the* creature who
must undertake family life in a country where it is
next to an absolute impossibility to have penjianent
domestics. Frequent change, occasional entire break-
downs, must be the lot of the majority of housekeep-
ers, — = particularly those who do not live in cities."

" In fact," said my wife, " we in America have so
far got out of the way of a womanhood that has any
vigor of outline or opulence of physical proportions,
that, when we see a woman made as a woman ought
to be, she strikes us as a monster. Our willowy
girls are afraid of nothing so much as growing stout ;
and if a young lady begins to round into proportions
like the women in Titian's and Giorgione's pictures,
she is distressed above measure, and begins ta make
secret inquiries into reducing diet, and to cling des-
perately to the strongest corset-lacing as her only
hope. It would require one to be better educated
than most of our girls are, to be willing to look like
the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo.

" Once in a while our Italian opera-singers bring to
our shores those glorious physiques which formed the
inspiration of Italian painters ; and then American
editors make coarse jokes about Barnum's fat woman,
and avalanches, and pretend to be struck with terror
at such dimensions.

The Transition.

133

" We should be better instructed, and consider that
Italy does us a favor, in sending us specimens, not
only of higher styles of musical art, but of a warmer,
richer, and more abundant womanly life. The mag-
nificent voice is only in keeping with the magnificent
proportions of the singer. A voice which has no
grate, no strain, which flows without effort, — which
does not labor eagerly up to a high note, but alights
on it like a bird from above, there carelessly warbling
and trilling, — a voice which then without effort sinks
into broad, rich, sombre depths of soft, heavy chest-
tone, — can come only with a physical nature at once
strong, wide, and fine, — from a nature such as the
sun of Italy ripens, as he does her golden grapes,
filling it with the new wine of song.'^

" Well," said I, " so much for our strictures on Miss
Letitia's letter. What comes next ?

"Here is a correspondent who answers the ques-
tion, 'What shall we do with her?' — apropos to the
case of the distressed young woman which we con-
sidered in our first chapter.''

" And what does he recommend ? "

" He tells us that he should advise us to make our
distressed woman Marianne's housekeeper, and to
send South for three or four contrabands for her to
train, and, with great apparent complacency, seems
to tliink that course will solve all similar cases of
difficulty."

134

The Chimney-Corner.

"That's quite a man's view of the subject/' said
Jennie. " They think any woman who is n't particu-
larly fitted to do anything else can keep house."

"As if housekeeping were not the very highest
craft and mystery of social life," said I. " I admit
that our sex speak too unadvisedly on such topics,
and, being well instructed by my household priest-
esses, will humbly suggest the following ideas to my
correspondent.

" I St. A woman is not of course fit to be a house-
keeper because she is a woman of good education and
refinement.

" 2d. If she were, a family with young children in
it is not the proper place to establish a school for
untaught contrabands, however desirable their train-
ing may be.

" A woman of good education and good common
sense may learn to be a good housekeeper, as she
learns any trade, by going into a good family and
practising first one and then another branch of the
business, till finally she shall acquire the comprehen-
sive knowedge to direct all.

" The next letter I will read.

" ' Dear Mr. Crowfield, — Your papers relating
to the domestic problem have touched upon a diffi-
culty which threatens to become a matter of life and
death with me.

The Transition.

135

" ^ I am a young man, with good health, good
courage, and good prospects. I have, for a young
man, a fair income, and a prospect of its increase.
But my business requires me to reside in a country
town near a great manufacturing city. The demand
for labor there has made such a drain on the female
population of the vicinity, that it seems, for a great
part of the time, impossible to keep any servants at
all ; and what we can hire are of the poorest quality,
and want exorbitant wages. My wife was a well-
trained housekeeper, and knows perfectly all that
pertains to the care of a family; but she has three
little children, and a delicate babe only a few weeks
old ; and can any one woman do all that is needed
for such a household ? Something must be trusted to
servants ; and what is thus trusted brings such con-
fusion and waste and dirt into our house, that the
poor woman is constantly distraught between the
disgust of having them and the utter impossibility of
doing without them.

" ^ Now it has been suggested that we remedy the
trouble by paying higher wages ; but I find that for
the very highest wages I secure only the most mis-
erable service ; and yet, poor as it is, we are obliged
to put up with it, because there is an amount of work
to be done in our family that is absolutely beyond my
wife's strength.

136 The Chimney-Corner,

" ' I see her health wearing away under these trials,
her life made a burden ; I feel no power to help her ;
and I ask you, Mr. Crowfield, What are we to do ?
What is to become of family life in this country ?

"'^ Yours truly,

" ' A Young Family Man.'

"My friend's letter," said I, "touches upon the very
hinge of the difficulty of domestic life with the present
generation.

" The real, vital difficulty, after all, in our American
life is, that our country is so wide, so various, so
abounding in the richest fields of enterprise, that in
every direction the cry is of the plenteousness of the
harvest and the fewness of the laborers. In short,
there really are not laborers enough to do the work of
the country.

" Since the war has thrown the whole South open
to the competition of free labor, the demand for
workers is doubled and trebled. Manufactories of all
sorts are enlarging their borders, increasing their ma-
chinery, and calling for more hands. Every article of
hving is demanded with an imperativeness and over an
extent of territory which set at once additional thou-
sands to the task of production. Instead of being
easier to find hands to execute in all branches of use-
ful labor, it is likely to grow every year more difficult,

The Transition,

137

as new departments of manufacture and trade divide
the workers. The price of labor, even now higher in
this country than in any other, will rise still higher,
and thus complicate still more the problem of domes-
tic life. Even- if a reasonable quota, of intelligent
women choose domestic service, the demand will be
increasingly beyond the supply.'^

"And what have you to say to this," said my wife,
" seeing you cannot stop the prosperity of the coun-
try?"

" Simply this, — that communities will be driven to
organize, as they now do in Europe, to lessen the
labors of individual families by having some of the
present domestic tasks done out of the house.

" In France, for example, no housekeeper counts
either washing, ironing, or bread-making as part of
her domestic cares. All the family washing goes out
to a laundry; and being attended to by those who
make that department of labor a specialty, it comes
home in refreshingly beautiful order.

"We in America, though we pride ourselves on our
Yankee thrift, are far behind the French in domestic
economy. If all the families of a neighborhood
should put together the sums they separately spend in
buying or fitting up and keeping in repair tubs, boil-
ers, and other accommodations *for washing, all that
is consumed or wasted in soap, starch, bluing, fuel,

138

The Chimney-Corner,

together with the wages and board of an extra servant,
the aggregate would suffice to fit up a neighborhood
laundry, where one or two capable women could do
easily and well what ten or fifteen women now do
painfully and ill, and to the confusion and derange-
ment of all other family processes.

" The model laundries for the poor in London had
facilities which would enable a woman to do both the
washing and ironing of a small family in from two
to three hours, and were so arranged that a very few
women could with ease do the work of the neighbor-
hood.

" But in the absence of an establishment of this
sort, the housekeepers of a country village might help
themselves very much by owning a mangle in com-
mon, to which all the heavier parts of the ironing
could be sent American ingenuity has greatly im-
proved the machinery of the mangle. It is no longer
the heavy, cumbersome structure that it used to be in
the Old World, but a compact, neat piece of appa-
ratus, made in three or four difierent sizes to suit dif-
ferent-sized apartments.

" Mr. H. F. Bond of Waltham, Massachusetts, now
manufactures these articles, and sends them to all
parts of the country. The smallest of them does not
take up much more room than a sewing-machine, can
be turned by a boy of ten or twelve, and thus in the

The Transition.

139

course of an hour or two the heaviest and most fa-
tiguing part of a family ironing may be accomphshed.

" I should certainly advise the ' Young Family Man'
with a delicate wife and uncertain domestic help to
fortify his kitchen with one of these fixtures.

" But after all, I still say that the quarter to which I
look for the solution of the American problem of do-
mestic life is a wise use of the principle of associa-
tion.

" The future model village of New England, as I
see it, shall have for the use of its inhabitants not
merely a town lyceum-hall and a town library, but a
town laundry, fitted up with conveniences such as no
private house can afford, and paying a price to the
operators which will enable them to command an
excellence of work such as private families seldom
realize. It will also have a town bakery, where the
best of family bread, white, brown, and of all grains,
shall be compounded ; and lastly a town cook-shop,
where soup and meats may be bought, ready for the
table. Those of us who have kept house abroad
remember the ease with which our foreign establish-
ments were carried on. A suite of elegant apartments,
a courier, and one female servant, were the foundation
of domestic life. Our courier boarded us at a mod-
erate expense, and the servant took care of our rooms.
Punctually to the dinner-hour every day, our dinner.

14b The Chimney-Corner,

came in on the head of a porter from a neighboring
cook-shop. A large chest lined with tin, and kept
warm by a tiny charcoal stove in the centre, being
deposited in an ante-roo-m, from it came forth, ifirst,
soup, then fish, then roast of various names, and lastly
pastry and confections, — far more courses than any
reasonable Christian needs to keep him in healthy
condition ; and dinner being over, our box with its
debris went out of the house, leaving a clear field.

" Now I put it to the distressed ^ Young Family
Man ^ whether these three institutions of a bakery, a
cook-shop, and a laundry, in the village where he lives,
would not virtually annihilate his household cares, and
restore peace and comfort to his now distracted
family.

" There really is no more reason why every family
should make its own bread than its own butter, —
why every family should do its own washing and iron-
ing than its own tailoring or mantua-making. In
France, where certafnly the arts of economy are well
studied, there is some specialty for many domestic
needs for which we keep servants. The beautiful in-
laid floors are kept waxed and glossy by a professional
gentleman who wears a brush on his foot-sole, skates
gracefully over the surface, and, leaving all right, de-
parteth. Many families, each paying a small sum,
keep this servant in common.

The Transition,

141

" Now if ever there was a community which needed
to study the art of living, it is our American one ; for
at present, domestic life is so wearing and so oppres-
sive as seriously to affect health and happiness.
Whatever has been done abroad in the, way of comfort
and convenience can be done here ; and the first
neighborhood that shall set the example of dividing
the tasks and burdens of life by the judicious use of
the principle of association will initiate a most impor-
tant step in the way of national happiness and pros-
perity.

" My solution, then, of the domestic problem may
be formulized as follows : —

" I St. That women make self-helpfulness and family
helpfulness fashionable, and every woman use her
muscles daily in enough household work to give her
a good digestion.

" 2d. That the situation of a domestic be made so
respectable and respected that well-educated American
women shall be induced to take it as a training-school
for their future family life.

" 3d. That families by association lighten the multi-
farious labors of the domestic sphere.

" All of which I humbly submit to the good sense
and enterprise of American readers and workers."

VL

BODILY RELIGION : A SERMON ON GOOD
HEALTH.

/^^NE of our recent writers has said, that "good

health is physical religion " ; and it is a saying
worthy to be printed in golden letters. But good
health being physical religion, it fully shares that
indifference with which the human race regards things
confessedly the most important. The neglect of the
soul is the trite theme of all religious teachers ; and,
next to their souls, there is nothing that people neg-
lect so much as their bodies. Every person ought to
be perfectly healthy, just as everybody ought to be
perfectly religious ; but, in point of fact, the greater
part of mankind are so far from perfect moral or phys-
ical religion that they cannot even form a conception
of the blessing beyond them.

The mass of good, well-meaning Christians are not
yet advanced enough to guess at the change which a
perfect fidelity to Christ's spirit and precepts would
produce in them. And the majority of people who

Bodily Religion.

143

call themselves well, because they are not, at present,
upon any particular doctor's list, are not within sight
of what perfect health would be. That fulness of life,
that vigorous tone, and that elastic cheerfulness, which
make the mere fact of existence a luxury, that supple-
ness which carries one like a well-built boat over
every wave of unfavorable chance, — these are attri-
butes of the perfect health seldom enjoyed. We see
them in young children, in animals, and now and
then, but rarely, in some adult human being, who has
preserved intact the religion of the body through
all opposing influences. Perfect health supposes
not a state of mere quiescence, but of positive
enjoyment in living. See that little fellow, as his
nurse turns him out in the morning, fresh from his
bath, his hair newly curled, and his cheeks polished
like apples. Every step is a spring or a dance ; he
runs, he laughs, he shouts,. his face breaks into a thou-
sand dimpHng smiles at a word. His breakfast of
plain bread and milk is swallowed with an eager and
incredible delight, — it is so good that he stops to
laugh or thump the table now and then in expression
of his ecstasy. All day long he runs and frisks and
plays ; and when at night the little head seeks the
pillow, down go the eye-curtains, and sleep comes
without a dream. In the morning his first note is a
laugh and a crow, as he sits up in his crib and tries

144

The Chimney-Corner,

to pull papa's eyes open with his fat fingers. He is
an embodied joy, — he is sunshine and music and
laughter for all the house. With what a magnificent
generosity does the Author of life endow a little mor-
tal pilgrim in giving him at the outset of his career
such a body as this ! How miserable it is to look for-
ward twenty years, when the same child, now grown
a man, wakes in the morning with a dull, heavy head,
the consequence of smoking and studying till twelve
or one the night before ; when he rises languidly to a
late breakfast, and turns from this, and tries that, —
wants a devilled bone, or a cutlet with Worcestershire
sauce, to make eating possible ; and then, with slow
and plodding step, finds his way to his ofiice and his
books. Verily the shades of the prison-house gather
round the growing boy ; for, surely, no one will deny
that life often begins with health little less -perfect
than that of the angels.

But the man who habitually wakes sodden, head-
achy, and a little stupid, and who needs a cup of
strong coffee and various stimulating condiments to
coax his bodily system into something like fair work-
ing order, does not suppose he is out of health. He
says, " Very well, I thank you," to your inquiries, —
merely because he has entirely forgotten what good
health is. He is well, not because of any particular
pleasure in physical existence, but well simply because

Bodily Religion,

he is not a subject for prescriptions. Yet there is no
store of vitaHty, no buoyancy, no superabundant vigor,
to resist the strain and pressure to \vhich life puts
him. A checked perspiration, a draught of air ill-
timed, a crisis of perplexing business or care, and he
is down with a bilious attack, or an influenza, and
subject to doctors' orders for an indefinite period.
And if the case, be so with men, how is it with w^o
men ? How many women have at maturity the keen
appetite, the joyous love of life and motion, the elas-
ticity and sense of physical delight in existence, that
little children have ? How many have any superabun-
dance of vitality with which to meet the wear and
strain of life ? And yet they call themselves well.

But is it possible, in maturity, to have the joyful
fulness of the life of childhood ? Experience has
shown that the delicious freshness of this dawning
hour may be preserved even to mid-day, and may be
brought back and restored after it has been for years
a stranger. Nature, though a ^severe disciplinarian,
is still, in many respects, most patient and easy to
be entreated, and meets any repentant movement of
her prodigal children with wonderful condescension.
Take Bulwer's account of the first few weeks of his
sojourn at Malvern, and you will read, in very elegant
English, the story of an experience of pleasure which
has surprised and delighted many a patient at a water-
7 J

146 The CJiimney-Corner,

cure. The return to the great primitive elements of
health — water, air, and simple food, with a regular
system of exercise — has brought to many a jaded,
weary, worn-down human being the elastic spirits, the
simple, eager appetite, the sound sleep, of a little
child. Hence, the rude huts and- chalets of the peas-
ant Priessnitz were crowded with battered dukes and
princesses, and notables of every degree, who came
from the hot, enervating luxury which had drained
them of existence to find a keener pleasure in peas-
ants' bread under peasants' roofs than in soft raiment
and palaces. No arts of French cookery can possibly
make anything taste so well to a feeble and palled
appetite as plain brown bread and milk taste to a
hungry water-cure patient, fresh from bath and exer-
cise.

If the water-cure had done nothing more than es-
tablish the fact that the glow and joyousness of early
life are things which may be restored after having
been once wasted, it would have done a good work.
For if Nature is so forgiving to those who have once
lost or have squandered her treasures, what may not
be hoped for us if we can learn the art of never losing
the first health of childhood ? And though with us,
who have passed to maturity, it may be too late for
the blessing, cannot something be done for the chil-
dren who are yet to come after us ?

Bodily Religion,

147

Why is the first heaWi of childhood lost ? Is it not
the answer, that childhood is the only period of life
in which bodily health is made a prdminent object ?
Take our pretty boy, with cheeks like apples, who
started in life with a hop, skip, and dance, — to whom
laughter was like breathing, and who was enraptured
with plain bread and milk, — how did he grow into
the man who wakes so languid and dull, who wants
strong coffee and Worcestershire sauce to make his
breakfast go down ? When and where did he drop
the invaluable talisman that once made everything
look brighter and taste better to him, however rude
and simple, than now do the most elaborate combi-
nations? What is the boy's history? Why, for the
first seven years of his life his body is made of some
account. It is watched, cared for, dieted, disciplined,
fed with fresh air, and left to grow and develop like
a thrifty plant But from' the time school education
begins, the body is steadily ignored, and left to take
care of itself.

The boy is made to sit six hours a day in a close,
hot room, breathing impure air, putting the brain and
the nervous system upon a constant strain, while the
muscular system is repressed to an unnatural quiet.
During the six hours, perhaps twenty minutes are
allowed for all that play of the muscles which, up to
this time, has been the constant habit of his life.

148 The Chimney-Corner,

After this he is sent home with books, slate, and
lessons to occupy an hour or two more in preparing
for the next day. In the whole of this time there is
no kind of effort to train the physical system by ap-
propriate exercise. Something of the sort was at-
tempted years ago in the infant schools, but soon
given up ; and now, from the time study first begins,
the muscles are ignored in all primary schools. One
of the first results is the loss of that animal vigor
which formerly made the boy love motion for its own
sake. Even in his leisure hours he no longer leaps
and runs as he used to ; he learns to sit still, and by
and by sitting and lounging come to be the habit, and
vigorous motion the exception, for most of the hours
of the day. The education thus begun goes on from
primary to high school, from high school to college,
from college through professional studies of law, med-
icine, or theology, with this steady contempt for the
body, with no provision for its culture, training, or
development, but rather a direct and evident provision
for its deterioration and decay.

The want of suitable ventilation in school-rooms,
recitation-rooms, lecture-rooms, offices, court-rooms,
conference-rooms, and vestries, where young students
of law, medicine, and theology acquire their earlier
practice, is something simply appalling. Of itself it
would answer for men the question, why so many

Bodily Religion, 149

thoufend glad, active children come to a middle life
without joy, — a life whose best estate is a sort of
slow, plodding endurance. The despite and hatred
which most men seem to feel for God's gift of fresh
air, and their -resolution to breathe as little of it as
possible, could only come from a long course of edu-
cation, in which they have been accustomed to live
without it. Let any one notice the conduct of our
American people travelling in railroad cars. We will
suppose that about half of them are what might be
called well-educated people, who have learned in
books, or otherwise, that the air breathed from the
lungs is laden with impurities, — that it is noxious
and poisonous ; and yet, travel with these people half
a day, and you would suppose from their actions that
they considered the external air as a poison created
expressly to injure them, and that the only course of
safety lay in keeping the cars hermetically sealed, and
breathing over and over the vapor from each others'
lungs. If a person in despair at the intolerable foul-
ness raises a window, what frowns from all the neigh-
boring seats, especially from great rough-coated men,
who always seem the first to be apprehensive ! The
request to "put down that window" is almost sure to
follow a moment or two of fresh air. In vain have
rows of ventilators been put in the tops of some of the
cars, for conductors and passengers are both of one

The Chimney-Corner,

mind, that these ventilators are inlets of danger, and
must be kept carefully closed.

Railroad travelling in America is systematically,
and one would think carefully, arranged so as to vio-
late every possible law of health. The old rule to
keep the head cool and the feet warm is precisely
reversed. A red-hot stove heats the upper stratum
of air to oppression, while a stream of cold air is con-
stantly circulating about the lower extremities. The
most indigestible and unhealthy substances conceiv-
able are generally sold in the cars or at way-stations
for the confusion and distress of the stomach. Rarely
can a traveller obtain so innocent a thing as a plain
good sandwich of bread and meat, while pie, cake,
doughnuts, and all other culinary atrocities, are al-
most forced upon him at every stopping-place. In
France, England, and Germany the railroad cars are
perfectly ventilated ; the feet are kept warm by flat
cases filled with hot water and covered with carpet,
and answering the double purpose of warming the feet
and diffusing an agreeable temperature through the
car, without burning away the vitality of the air ;
while the arrangements at the refreshment-rooms pro-
vide for the passenger as wholesome and well-served a
meal of healthy, nutritious food as could be obtained
in any home circle.

What are we to infer concerning the home habits

Bodily Religion.

151

of a nation of men who so resignedly allow their
bodies to be poisoned and maltreated in travelling
over such an extent of territory as is covered by our
railroad lines? Does it not show that foul air and
improper food are too much matters of course to ex-
cite attention? As a writer in "The Nation'' has
lately remarked, it is simply and only because the
American nation like to have unventilated cars, and
to be fed on pie and coffee at stopping-places, that
nothing better is known to our travellers ; if there
were any marked dislike of such a state of things on
the part of the people, it would not exist. We have
wealth enough, and enterprise enough, and ingenuity
enough, in our American nation, to compass with
wonderful rapidity any end that really seems to us
desirable. An army was improvised when an army
was wanted, — and an army more perfectly equipped,
more bountifully fed, than so great a body of men
ever was before. Hospitals, Sanitary Commissions,
and Christian Commissions all arose out of the simple
conviction of the American people that they must
arise. If the American people were equally con-
vinced that foul air was a poison, — thai to have cold
feet and hot heads was to invite an attack of illness,
— that maple-sugar, pop-corn, peppermint candy, pie,
doughnuts, and peanuts are not diet for reasonable
beings, — they would have railroad accommodations
very different from those now in existence.

152

The Chhrniey-Corner,

We have spoken of the foul air of court-rooms.
What better illustration could be given of the utter
contempt with which the laws of bodily health are
treated, than the condition of these places? Our
lawyers are our higlily educated men. They have
been through high-school and college training, they
have learned the properties of oxygen, nitrogen, and
carbonic-acid gas, and have seen a mouse die under
an exhausted receiver, and of course they know that
foul, unventilated rooms are bad for the health ; and
yet generation after generation of men so taught and
trained will spend the greater part of their lives in
rooms notorious for their close and impure air, with-
out so much as an attempt to remedy the evil. A
v/ell-ventilated court-room is a four-leaved clover
among court-rooms. Young m.en are constantly los-
ing their health at the bar ; lung diseases, dyspepsia,
follow them up, gradually sapping their vitality.
Some of the brightest ornaments of the profession
have actually fallen dead as they stood pleading, —
victims of the fearful pressure of poisonous and
heated air upon the excited brain. The deaths of
Salmon P. Chase of Portland, uncle of our present
Chief Justice, and of Ezekiel Webster, the brother
of our great statesman, are memorable examples of
the calamitous effects of the eiTors dwelt upon ; and
yet, strange to say, nothing efficient is done to mend

Bodily Religion,

153

these errors, and give the body an equal chance with
the mind in the pressure of the world's affairs.

But churches, lecture-rooms, and vestries, and all
buildings devoted especially to the good of the soul,
are equally witness of the mind's disdain of the body's
needs, and the body's consequent revenge upon the
soul. In how many of these places has the question
of a thorough provision of fresh air been even con-
sidered? People would never think of bringing a
thousand persons into a desert place, and keeping
them there, without making preparations to feed them.
Bread and butter, potatoes and meat, must plainly be
found for them ; but a thousand human beings are
put into a building to remain a given number of
hours, and no one asks the question whether means
exist for giving each one the quantum of fresh air
needed for his circulation, and these thousand victims
will consent to be slowly poisoned, gasping, sweating,
getting red in the face, with confused and sleepy
brains, while a minister with a yet redder face and a
more oppressed brain struggles and wrestles, through
the hot, seething vapors, to make clear to them the
mysteries of faith. How many churches are there
that for six or eight months in the year are never
ventilated at all, except by the accidental opening of
doors ? The foul air generated by one congregation
is locked up by the sexton for the use of the next

154

The Chimney-Corner.

assembly \ and so gathers and gathers from week to
week, and month to month, while devout persons
upbraid themselves, and are ready to tear their hair,
because they always feel stupid and sleepy in church.
The proper ventilation of their churches and vestries
would remove that spiritual deadness of which their
prayers and hymns complain. A man hoeing his
corn out on a breezy hillside is bright and alert, his
mind works clearly, and he feels interested in religion,
and thinks of many a thing that might be said at the
prayer-meeting at night. But at night, when he sits
down in a little room where the air reeks with the
vapor of his neighbor's breath and the smoke of
kerosene lamps, he finds himself suddenly dull and
drowsy, — without emotion, without thought, without
feeling, — and he rises and reproaches him.self for
this state of things. He calls up#n his soul and all
that is within him to bless the Lord ; but the indig-
nant body, abused, insulted, ignored, takes the soul
by the throat, and says, " If you won't let me have a
good time, neither shall you." Revivals of religion,
with ministers and with those people whose moral or-
ganization leads them to take most interest in them,
often end in periods of bodily ill-health and depres-
sion. But is there any need of this ? Suppose that
a revival of religion required, as a formula, that all
the members of a given congregation should daily

Bodily Religion. 155

take a minute dose of arsenic in concert, — we should
not be surprised after a while to hear of various ill
effects therefrom ; and, as vestries and lecture-rooms
are now arranged, a daily prayer-meeting is often
nothing more nor less than a number of persons
spending half an hour a day breathing poison from
each other's lungs. There is not only no need of
this, but, on the contrary, a good supply of pure air
would make the daily prayer-meeting far more enjoya-
ble. The body, if allowed the slighest degree of fair
play, so far from being a contumacious infidel and
opposer, becomes a very fair Christian helper, and,
instead of throttling the soul, gives it wings to rise to
celestial regions.

This branch of our subject we will quit with one
significant anecdote. A certain rural church was
somewhat famous for its picturesque Gothic archi-
tecture, and equally famous for its sleepy atmosphere,
the rules of Gothic symmetry requiring very small
windows, which could be only partially opened.
Everybody was affected alilce in this church ; minister
and people complained that it was like the enchanted
ground, -in the Pilgrim's Progress. Do what they
would, sleep was ever at their elbows ; the blue, red,
and green of the painted windows melted into a
rainbow dimness of hazy confusion ; and ere they
were aware, they were off on a cloud to the land of
dreams.

156 The Chimney-Corner,

An energetic sister in the church suggested the
inquiry, whether it was ever ventilated, and discov-
ered that it was regularly locked up at the close of
service, and remained so till opened for the next
week. She suggested the inquiry, whether giving the
church a thorough airing on. Saturday would not
improve the Sunday services ; but nobody acted on
her suggestion. Finally, she borrowed the sexton^s
key one Saturday night, and went into the church and
opened all the windows herself, and let them remain
so for the night. The next day everybody remarked
the improved comfort of the church, and wondered
what had produced the change. Nevertheless, when
it was discovered, it was not deem^ed a matter of
enough importance to call for an order on the sexton
to perpetuate the improvement.

The ventilation of private dwellings in this country
is such as might be expected from that entire indiffer-
ence to the laws of health manifested in public estab-
lishments. Let a person travel in private conveyance
up through the valley of the Connecticut, and stop for
a night at the taverns which he will usually find at
the end of each day's stage. The bed-chamber into
which he will be ushered will be the concentration ot
all forms of bad air. The house is redolent of the
vegetables in the cellar, — cabbages, turnips, and
potatoes ; and this fragrance is confined and retained

Bodily Religion. 157

by the custom of closing the window-blinds and drop-
ping the inside curtains, so that neither air nor sun-
shine enters in to purify. Add to this the strong
odor of a new feather-bed and pillows, and you have
a combination of perfumes most appalling to a deli-
cate sense. Yet travellers take possession of these
rooms, sleep in them all night without raising the
window or opening the blinds, and leave them to be
shut up for other travellers.

The spare chamber of many dwellings seems to be
an hermetically closed box, opened only twice a year,
for spring and fall cleaning; but for the rest of the
time closed to the sun and the air of heaven. Thrifty
country housekeepers often adopt the custom of mak-
ing their beds on the instant after they are left, with-
out airing the sheets and mattresses ; and a bed so
made gradually becomes permeated with the insensi-
ble emanations of the human body, so as to be a
steady corrupter of the atmosphere.

In the winter, the windows are calked and listed,
the throat of the chimney built up with a tight brick
wall, and a close stove is introduced to help burn out
the vitality of the air. In a sitting-room like this,
from five to ten persons will spend about eight months
of the year, with no other ventilation than that gained
by the casual opening and shutting of doors. Is it
any wonder that consumption every year sweeps away

158

The Ckimney-Corner.

its thousands? — that people are suffering constant
chronic aihnents, — neuralgia, nervous dyspepsia, and
all the host of indefinite bad feelings that rob life of
sweetness and flower and bloom ?

A recent writer raises the inquiry, whether the com-
munity would not gain in health by the demolition of
all dwelling-houses. That is, he suggests the ques-
tion, whether the evils from foul air are not so great
and so constant, that they countervail the advantages
of shelter. Consumptive patients far gone have been
known to be cured by long journeys, which have re-
quired them to be day and night in the open air.
Sleep under the open heaven, even though the person
be exposed to the various accidents of weather, has
often proved a miraculous restorer after everything
else had failed. But surely, if simple fresh air is so
healing and preserving a thing, some means might be
found to keep the air in a house just as pure and vig-
orous as it is outside.

An article in the May number of " Harpers' Maga-
zine " presents drawings of a very simple arrangement
by which any house can be made thoroughly self-ven-
tilating. Ventilation, as this article shows, consists
in two things, — a perfect and certain expulsion from
the dwelling of all foul air breathed from the lungs or
arising from any other cause, and the constant supply
of pure air.

Bodily Religion, 159

One source of foul air cannot be too much guarded
against, — we mean imperfect gas-pipes. A want of
thoroughness in execution is the sin of our American
artisans, and very few gas-fixtures are so thoroughly
made that more or less gas does not Tescape and min-
gle with the air of the dwelling. There are parlors
where plants cannot be made to live, because the gas
kills them ; and yet their occupants do not seem to
reflect that an air in which a plant cannot live must
be dangerous for a human being. The veiy clemency
and long-suffering of Nature to those who persistently
violate her laws is one great cause why men are, phys-
ically speaking, such sinners as they are. If foul air
poisoned at once and completely, we should have
well-ventilated houses, whatever else we failed to have.
But because people can go on for weeks, months, and
years, breathing poisons, and slowly and imperceptibly
lowering the tone of their vital powers, and yet be
what they call " pretty well, I thank you,'' sermons on
ventilation and fresh air go by them as an idle song.
" I don't see but we are well enough, and we never
took much pains about these things. There 's air
enough gets into houses, of course. What with doors .
opening and windows occasionally lifted, the air of
houses is generally good enough " ; — and so the mat-
ter is dismissed.

One of Heaven's great hygienic teachers is now

i6o The Chimney-Corner.

abroad in the world, giving lessons on health to the
children of men. The cholera is like the angel
whom God threatened to send as leader to the rebel-
lious Israelites. " Beware of him, obey his voice, and
provoke him not ; for he will not pardon your trans-
gressions.'' The advent of this fearful messenger
seems really to be made necessary by the contempt
with which men treat the physical laws of their being.
What else could have purified the dark places of New
York ? What a wiping-up and reforming and cleans-
ing is going before him through the country ! At last
we find that Nature is in earnest, and that her laws
cannot be always ignored with impunity. Poisoned
air is recognized at last as an evil, — even although
the poison cannot be weighed, measured, or tasted ;
and if all the precautions that men are now willing to
take could be made perpetual, the alarm would be a
blessing to the world.

Like the principles of spiritual religion, the princi-
ples of physical religion are few and easy to be under-
stood. An old medical apothegm personifies the
hygienic forces as the Doctors Air, Diet, Exercise,
and Quiet ; and these four will be found, on reflec-
tion, to cover the whole ground of what is required to
preserve human health. A human being whose lungs
have always been nourished by pure air, whose stom-
ach has been fed only by appropriate food, whose

Bodily Religion, i6i

muscles have been systematically trained by appropri-
ate exercises, and whose mind is kept tranquil by
faith in God and a good conscience, has jl)erfect phys-
ical religion, TJiere is a line where physical religion
must necessarily overlap spiritual religion and rest
upon it. No human being can be assured of perfect
health, through all the strain and Vv^ear and tear of
such cares and such perplexities as life brings, without
the rest of faith in God, An unsubmissive, unconfid-
ing, unresigned soul will make vain the best hygienic
treatment ; and, on the contrary, the most saintly re-
ligious resolution and purpose may be defeated and
vitiated by an habitual ignorance and disregard of the
laws of the physical system.

Perfect spiritual religion cannot exist without perfect
physical religion. Every flaw and defect in the bodily
system is just so much taken from the spiritual vital-
ity : w^e are commanded to glorify God, not simply in
our spirits, but in our bodies and spirits. The only
example of perfect manhood the v/orld ever sav/ im-
presses us more than anything else by an atmosphere
of perfect healthiness. There is a calmness, a steadi-
ness, in the character of Jesus, a naturalness in his
evolution of the sublimest truths under the strain of
the most absorbing and intense excitement, that could
come only from the one perfectly trained and devel-
oped body, bearing as a pure and sacred shrine the

K

1 62 The Chimney-Corner,

One Perfect Spirit. Jesus of Nazareth, journeying on
foot from city to city, always calm yet always fervent,
always steady yet glowing with a white heat of sacred
enthusiasm, able to walk and teach all day and after-
wards to continue in prayer all night, with unshaken
nerves, sedately patient, serenely reticent, perfectly
self-controlled, walked the earth, the only man that
perfectly glorified God in his body no less than in his
spirit. It is worthy of remark, that in choosing his
disciples he chose plain men from the laboring classes,
who had lived the most obediently to the simple,
unperverted laws of nature. He chose men of good
and pure bodies, — simple, natural, childlike, healthy
men, — and baptized their souls with the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit.

The hygienic bearings of the New Testament have
never been sufficiently understood. The basis of
them lies in the solemn declaration, that our bodies
are to be temples of the Holy Spirit, and that all
abuse of them is of the nature of sacrilege. Rever-
ence for the physical system, as the outward shrine
and temple of the spiritual, is the peculiarity of the
Christian religion. The doctrine of the resurrection
of the body, and its physical immortality, sets the last
crown of honor upon it. That bodily system which
God declared worthy to be gathered back from the
dust of the grave, and re-created, as the soul's immor-

Bodily Religion,

163

tal companion, must necessarily be dear and precious
in the eyes of its Creator. The one passage in the
New Testament in which it is spoken of disparagingly
is where Paul contrasts it with the brighter glory of
what is to come : " He shall change our vile bodies,
that they may be fashioned like his glorious body."
From this passage has come abundance of reviling of
the physical system. Memoirs of good men are full
of abuse of it, as the clog, the load, the burden, the
chain. It is spoken of as pollution, as corruption, —
in short, one would think that the Creator had imi-
tated the cruelty of some Oriental despots who have
been known to chain a festering corpse to a living
body. Accordingly, the memoirs of these pious men
are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by
the persistent neglect of the most necessary and im-
portant laws of the bodily system ; and the body, out-
raged and down-trodden-, has turned traitor to the
••soul, and played the adversary with fearful power.
Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which
flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged ner-
vous system, — temptations to anger, to irritability, to
selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite and pas-
sion ? No wonder that the poor soul longs for the
hour of release from such a companion.

But that human body which God declares expressly
was made to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, which

164 T^he Chimney-Corner,

he considers worthy to be perpetuated by a resurrec-
tion and an immortal existence, cannot be intended
to be a clog and a hindrance to spiritual advance-
ment. A perfect body; working in perfect tune and
time, would open glimpses of happiness to the soul
approaching the joys we hope for in heaven. It is
only through the images of things which our bodily
senses have taught us, that we can form any concep-
tion of that future bliss ; and the more perfect these
senses, the more perfect our conceptions must be.

The conclusion of the whole matter, and the prac-
tical application of this sermon, is: — First, that all
men set themselves to form the idea of what perfect
health is, and resolve to realize it for themselves and
their children. Second, that with a view to this they
study the religion of the body, in such simple and
popular treatises as those of George Combe, Dr. Dio
Lewis, and others, and with simple and honest hearts
practise what they there learn. Third, that the train-'
ing of the bodily system should form a regular part
of our common-school education, — every common
school being provided with a well-instructed teacher
of gymnastics ; and the growth and development of
each pupil's body being as much noticed and marked
as is now the growth of his mind. The same course
should be continued and enlarged in colleges and
female seminaries, which should have professors of

Bodily Religion,

hygiene appointed to give thorough instruction con-
cerning the laws of health.

And when this is all done, we may hope that
crooked spines, pimpled faces, sallow complexions,
stooping shoulders, and all other signs indicating an
undeveloped physical vitality, will, in the course of a
few generations, disappear from the earth, and men
will have bodies which will glorify God, their great
Architect.

The soul of man has got as far as it can without
the body. Religion herself stops and looks back,
waiting for the body to overtake her. The soul's
great enemy and hindrance can be made her best
friend and most powerful help ; and it is high time
that this era were begun. We old sinners, who have
lived carelessly, and almost spent our day of grace,
may not gain much of its good ; but the children, — •
shall there not be a more perfect day for them ?
Shall there not come a day when the little child,
whom Christ set forth to his disciples as the type of
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, shall be the
type no less of our physical than our spiritual advance-
ment, — when men and women shall arise, keeping
through long and happy lives the simple, unperverted
appetites, the joyous freshness of spirit, the keen
delight in mere existence, the dreamless sleep and
happy waking of early childhood t

VII.

HOW SHALL WE ENTERTAIN OUR COM-
PANY?

" I ^HE fact is/' said Marianne, " we must have a

party. Bob don't like to hear of it, but it
must come. We are in debt to everybody : we have
been invited everywhere, and never had anything like
a party since we were married, and it won't do."

" For my part, I hate parties," said Bob. " They
put your house all out of order, give all the women a
sick-headache, and all the men an indigestion ; you
never see anybody to any purpose 3 the girls look
bewitched, and the women answer you at cross-pur-
poses, and call you by the name of your next-door
neighbor, in their agitation of mind. We stay out
beyond our usual bedtime, come home and find some
baby crying, or child who has been sitting up till
nobody knows when ; and the next morning, when I
must be at my office by eight, and wife must attend
to her children, we are sleepy and headachy. I pro-
test against making overtures to entrap some hundrecl

How shall we entertain ottr Company? 167

of my respectable married friends into this snare
which has so often entangled me. If I had my way,
I would never go to another party ; and as to giving
one — I suppose, since my empress has declared her
intentions, that I shall be brought into doing it j but
it shall be under protest."

"But, you see, we must keep up society," said
Marianne.

" But I insist on it," said Bob, " it is n't keeping up
society. AVhat earthly thing do you learn about peo-
ple by meeting them in a general crush, where all are
coming, going, laughing, talking, and looking at each
other ? No person of common sense ever puts forth
any idea he cares twopence about, under such cir-
cumstances ; all that is exchanged is a certain set of
commonplaces and platitudes which people keep for
parties, just as they do their kid gloves and finery.
Now there are our neighbors, the Browns. When
they drop in of an evening, she knitting, and he with
the last article in the paper, she really comes out with
a great deal of fresh, lively, earnest, original talk. We
have a good time, and I like her so much that it quite
verges on loving ; but see her in a party, when she
manifests herself over five or six flounces of pink silk
and a perfect egg-froth of tulle, her head adorned with
a thicket of craped hair and roses, and it is plain at
first view that talking with her is quite out of the ques-

1 68 The Chhnney-Co7iter,

tion. What has been done to her head on the out-
side has evidently had some effect within, for she is
no longer the Mrs. Brown you knew in her e very-day
dress, but Mrs. Brown in a party state of mind, and
too distracted to think of anything in particular. She
has a few words that she answers to everything you
say, as, for example, ' O, very ! * ^ Certainly ! ' ^ How
extraordinary ! ' ^ So happy to,' &c. The fact is, that
she has come into a state in which any real communi-
cation with her mind and character must be suspend-
ed till the party is over and she is rested. Now I like
society, which is the reason why I hate parties.

"But you see," said Marianne, "what are we to
do? Everybody can't drop in to spend an evening
with you. If it were not for these parties, there are
quantities of your acquaintances whom you would
never meet."

"And of what use is it to meet them? Do you
really know them any better for meeting them got up
in unusual dresses, and sitting down together when
the only thing exchanged is the remark that it is hot
or cold, or it rains, or it is dry, or any other patent
surface-fact that answers the purpose of making be-
lieve you are talking when neither of you is saying a
word?"

"Well, now, for my part," said Marianne, "I con-
fess I like parties : they amuse me. I come home

How shall we entertain onr Company? 169

feeling kinder and better to people, just for the little
I see of them when they are all dressed up and in
good humor with themselves. To be sure w^e don't
say anything very profound, — I don't think the most
of us have anything very profound to 'say; but I ask
Mrs. Brown where she buys her lace, and she tells me
how she washes it, and somebody else tells me about
her baby, and promises me a new sack-pattern. Then
I like to see the pretty, nice young girls flirting with
the nice young men ; and I like to be dressed up a
little myself, even if my finery is all old and many
times made over. It does me good to be rubbed up
and brightened."

"Like old silver," said Bob.

" Yes, like old silver, precisely ; and even if I do
come home tired, it does my mind good to have that
change of scene and faces. You men do not know
what it is to be tied to house and nursery all day, and
what a perfect weariness and lassitude it often brings
on us women. For my part, I think parties are a
beneficial institution of society, and that it is worth a
good deal of fatigue and trouble to get one up."

"Then there's the expense," said Bob. "What
earthly need is there of a grand regale of oysters,
chicken-salad, ice-creams, coffee, and champagne, be-
tween eleven and twelve o'clock at night, when no
one of us would ever think of wanting or taking any
8

170 The Chimney-Cornei^,

such articles upon our stomachs in our own homes ?
If we were all of us in the habit of having a regular
repast at that hour, it might be well enough to enjoy
one with our neighbor but the party fare is generally
just so much in addition to the honest three meals
which we have eaten during the day. Now, to spend
from fifty to one, two, or three hundred dollars in giv-
ing all our friends an indigestion from a midnight
meal seems to me a very poor investment. Yet if we
once begin to give the party, we must have everything
that is given at the other parties, or wherefore do we
live ? And caterers and waiters rack their brains to
devise new forms of expense and extravagance ; and
when the bill comes in, one is sure to feel that one is
paying a great deal of money for a great deal of non-
sense. It is, in fact, worse than nonsense, because
our dear friends are, in half the cases, not only no bet-
ter, but a great deal worse, for what they have eaten.'*
" But there is this advantage to society," said Ru-
dolph, — " it helps us young physicians. What would
the physicians do if parties were abolished ? Take all
the colds that are caught by our fair friends with low
necks and short sleeves, all the troubles from dancing
in tight dresses and inhaling bad air, and all the
headaches and indigestions from the melange of lob-
ster-salad, two or three kinds of ice-cream, cake, and
coffee on delicate stomachs, and our profession gets a

How shall we entertain our Company? 171

degree of encouragement that is worthy to be thought
of."

" But the question arises," said my wife, " whether
there are not ways of promoting social feeHng less
expensive, more simple and natural' and rational. I
am inclined to think that there are.''

" Yes," said Theophilus Thoro ; " for large parties
are not, as a general thing, given with any wish or
intention of really improving our acquaintance with
our neighbors. In many cases they are openly and
avowedly a general tribute paid at intervals to society,
for and in consideration of which you are to sit with
closed blinds and doors and be let alone for the rest
of the year. Mrs. Bogus, for instance, lives to keep
her house in order, her closets locked, her silver
counted and in the safe, and her china-closet in un-
disturbed order. Her ' best things ' are put away with
such admirable precision, in so many wrappings and
foldings, and secured with so many a twist and twine,
that to get them out is one of the seven labors of
Hercules, not to be lightly or unadvisedly taken in
hand, but reverently, discreetly, and once for all, in
an annual or biennial party. Then says Mrs. Bogus,
* For Heaven's sake, let 's have every creature we can
think of, and have 'em all over with at once. For
pity's sake, let 's have no driblets left that we shall
have to be inviting to dinner or to tea. No matter

172

The Chimney-Corner,

whether they can come or not, — only send them the
invitation, and our part is done ; and, thank Heaven !
we shall be free for a year.'"

"Yes," said my wife ; "a great stand-up party
bears just the same relation towards the offer of real
hospitality and good-will as Miss Sally Brass's offer
of meat to the little hungry Marchioness, when, with
a bit uplifted on the end of a fork, she addressed her,
* Will you have this piece of meat ? No ? Well, then,
remember and don't say you have n't had meat offered
to you ! ' You .are invited to a general jam, at the risk
of your life and health ; and if you refuse, don't say
you have n't had hospitality offered to you. All our
debts are wiped out and our slate clean ; now we will
have our own closed doors, no company and no
trouble, and our best china shall repose undisturbed
on its shelves. Mrs. Bogus says she never could exist
in the way that Mrs. Easygo does, with a constant
drip of company, — two or three to breakfast one day,
half a dozen to dinner the next, and little evening
gatherings once or twice a week. It' must keep her
house in confusion all the time ; yet, for real social
feeling, real exchange of thought and opinion, there is
more of it in one half-hour at Mrs. Easygo's than in a
dozen of Mrs. Bogus's great parties.

" The fact is, that Mrs. Easygo really does like the
society of human beings. She is genuinely and heart-

How shall we entertain our Company? 173

ily social ; and, in consequence, though she has very
limited means, and no money to spend in giving great
entertainments, her domestic establishment is a sort
of social exchange, where more friendships are formed,
more real acquaintance made, and more agreeable
hours spent, than in any other place that can be
named. She never has large parties, — great general
pay-days of social debts, — but small, well-chosen cir-
cles of people, selected so thoughtfully, with a view
to the pleasure which congenial persons give each
other, as to make the invitation an act of real per-
sonal kindness. She always manages to have some-
thing for the entertainment of her friends, so that
they are not reduced to the simple alternatives of
gaping at each other's dresses and eating lobster-salad
and ice-cream. There is either some choice music,
or a reading of fine poetry, or a well-acted charade, or
a portfolio of photographs and pictures, to enliven the
hour and start conversation ; and as the people are
skilfully chosen with reference to each other, as there
is no hurry or heat or confusion, conversation, in its
best sense, can bubble up, fresh, genuine, clear, and
sparkling as a woodland spring, and one goes away
really rested and refreshed. The slight entertainment
provided is just enough to enable you to eat salt
together in Arab fashion, — not enough to form the
' leading feature of the evening. A cup of tea and a

174

The Chimney-Corner,

basket of cake, or a salver of ices, silently passed at
quiet intervals, do not interrupt conversation or over-
load the stomach.''

" The fact is," said I, " that the art of society among
us Anglo-Saxons is yet in its ruder stages. AVe are
not, as a race, social and confiding, like the French
and Italians and Germans. We have a word for
home, and our home is often a moated grange, an
island, a castle with its drawbridge up, cutting us off
from all but our own home-circle. In France and
Germany and Italy there are the boulevards and pub-
lip gardens, where people do their family living in
common. Mr. A. is breakfasting under one tree, with
wife and children around, and Mr. B. is breakfasting
under another tree, hard by ; and messages, nods, and
smiles pass backward and forward. Families see
each other daily in these public resorts, and exchange
mutual offices of good-will. Perhaps from these cus-
toms of society come that naive simplicity and aban-
dofi which one remarks in the Continental, in opposi-
tion to the Anglo-Saxon, habits of conversation. A
Frenchman or an Italian will talk to you of his feel-
ings and plans and prospects with an unreserve that
is perfectly unaccountable to you, who have always
felt that such things must be kept for the very inner-
most circle of home privacy. But the Frenchman or
Italian has from a child been brought up to pass his

How shall we entertain our Company? 175

family life in places of public resort, in constant con-
tact and intercommunion with other families ; and the
social and conversational instinct has thus been daily
strengthened. Hence the reunions of these people
have been characterized by a sprigbtliness and vigor
and spirit that the Anglo-Saxon has in vain attempted
to seize and reproduce. English and American con-
versazioni have very generally proved a failure, from
the rooted, frozen habit of reticence and reserve
which grows with our growth and strengthens with
our strength. The fact is, that the Anglo-Saxon race
as a race does not enjoy talking, and, except in rare
instances, does not talk well. A daily convocation of
people, without refreshments or any extraneous object
but the simple pleasure of seeing and talking with
each other, is a thing that can scarcely be understood
in English or American society. Social entertainment
presupposes in the Anglo-Saxon mind soinething to eat,
and not only something, but a great deal. Enormous
dinners or great suppers constitute the entertainment.
Nobody seems to have formed the idea that the talk-
ing — the simple exchange of the social feelings — is,
of itself, the entertainment, and that bei?ig together is
the pleasure.

Madame Recamier for years had a circle of friends
who met every afternoon in her salo?i from four to six
o'clock, for the simple and sole pleasure of talking

176

The Chimitey-Corner,

with each other. The very first wits and men of let-
ters and statesmen and savans were enrolled in it, and
each brought to the entertainment some choice mor-
ceau which he had laid aside firom his own particular
field to add to the feast. The daily intimacy gave
each one such perfect insight into all the others' habits
of thought, tastes, and preferences, that the conversa-
tion was like the celebrated music of the Conservatoire
in Paris, a concert of perfectly chorded instruments
taught by long habit of harmonious intercourse to
keep exact time and tune together.

" conversation presupposes intimate acquaint-
ance. People must see each other often enough to
wear off the rough bark and outside rind of common-
places and conventionalities in which their real ideas
are enwrapped, and give forth without reserve their
innermost and best feelings. Now what is called a
large party is the first and rudest form of social inter-
course. The most we can say of it is, that it is better
than nothing. Men and women are crowded together
like cattle in a pen. They look at each other, they
jostle each other, exchange a few common bleatings,
and eat together ; and so the performance terminates.
One may be crushed evening after evening against
men or women, and learn very little about them. You
may decide that a lady is good-tempered, when any
amount of trampling on the skirt of her new silk dress

How shall we entertain ottr Company? 177

brings no cloud to her brow. But is it good temper,
or only wanton carelessness, which cares nothing for
waste ? You can see that a man is. not a gentleman
who siquares his back to ladies at the supper-table,
and devours boned turkey and pate 'de fois gras, while
they vainly reach over and around him for something,
and that another is a gentleman so' far as to prefer the
care of his weaker neighbors to the immediate indul-
gence of his own appetites ; but further than this you
learn little. Sometimes, it is true, in some secluded
corner, two people of fine nervous system, undisturbed
by the general confusion, may have a sociable half-
hour, and really part feeling that they like each other
better, and know more of each other than before.
Yet these general gatherings have, after all, their
value. They are not so good as something better
would be, but they cannot be wholly dispensed with.
It is far better that Mrs. Bogus should give an annual
party, when she takes down all her bedsteads and
throws open her whole house, than that she should
never see her friends and neighbors inside her doors
at all. She may feel that she has neither the taste
nor the talent for constant small reunions. Such
things, she may feel, require a social tact which she
has not. She would be utterly at a loss how to con-
duct them. Each one would cost her as much anx-
iety and thought as her annual gathering, and prove
8* L

178 The Chimney-Corner.

a failure after all ; whereas the annual demonstration
caA be put wholly into the hands of the caterer, who
comes in force, with flowers, silver, china, servants,
and, taking the house into his own hands, gives her
entertainment for her, leaving to her no responsibility
but the payment of the bills ; and if Mr. Bogus does
not quarrel with them, we know no reason why any
one else should ; and I think Mrs. Bogus merits well
of the republic, for doing what she can do towards the
hospitalities of the season. I 'm sure I never cursed
her in my heart, even when her strong coffee has held
mine eyes open till morning, and her superlative lob-
ster-salads have given me the very darkest views of
human life that ever dyspepsia and east wind could
engender. Mrs. Bogus is the Eve who offers the
apple ; but, after all, I am the foolish Adam who take
and eat what I know is going to hurt me, and I am
too gallant to visit my sins on the head of my too
obliging tempter. In country places in particular,
where little is going on and life is apt to stagnate, a
good, large, generous party, which brings the whole
neighborhood into one house to have a jolly time, to
eat, drink, and be merry, is really quite a work of
love and mercy. People see one another in their
best CiOthes, and that is something; the elders ex-
change all manner of simple pleasantries and civilities,
and talk over their domestic affairs, while the young

Hozv shall we cmteriain our Company? 179

people flirt, in that wholesome manner which is one
of the safest of youthful follies. A country party, in
fact, may be set down as a work of benevolence, and
the money expended thereon fairly charged to the
account of the great cause of peace and good-will on
earth."

" But don't you think," said my wife, " that, if the
charge of providing the entertainment were less labo-
rious, these gatherings could be more frequent ? You
see, if a woman feels that she must have five kinds of
cake, and six kinds of preserves, and even ice-cream
and jellies in a region where no confectioner comes
in to abbreviate her labors, she will sit with closed
doors, and do nothing towards the general exchange
of life, because she cannot do as much as Mrs. Smith
or Mrs. Parsons. If the idea of meeting together had
some other focal point than eating, I think there
would be more social, feeling. It might be a musical
reunion, where the various young people of a circle
agreed to furnish each a song or an instrumental per-
formance. It might be an impromptu charade party,
bringing out something of that taste in arrangement
of costume, and capacity for dramatic effect, of which
there is more latent in society than "we think. It
might be the reading of articles in prose and poetry
furnished to a common paper or portfolio, which
would awaken an abundance of interest and specula-

i8o The Chimney-Corner,

tion on the authorship, or it might be dramatic read-
ings and recitations. Any or all of these pastimes
might make an evening so entertaining that a simple
cup of tea and a plate of cake or biscuit would be all
the refreshment needed."

" We may with advantage steal a leaf now and
then from some foreign book," said I. " In France
and Italy, families have their peculiar days set apart
for the reception of friends at their own houses.
The whole house is put upon a footing of hospitality
and invitation, and the whole mind is given to receiv-
ing the various friends. In the evening the salon is
filled. The guests, coming from week to week, for
years, become in time friends ; the resort has the
charm of a home circle ; there are certain faces that
you are always sure to meet there. A lady once _said
to me of a certain gentleman and lady whom she
missed from her circle, * They have been at our house
every Wednesday evening for twenty years.' It seems
to me that this frequency of meeting is the great
secret of agreeable society. One sees, in our Ameri-
can life, abundance of people who are everything that
is charming and cultivated, but one never sees enough
of them. One meets them at some quiet reunion,
passes a delightful hour, thinks how charming they
are, and wishes one could see more of them. But the
pleasant meeting is like the encounter of two ships in

How shall we entertain our Company? i8i

mid-ocean : away we sail, each on his respective
course, to see each other no more till the pleasant
remembrance has died away. Yet 'were there some
quiet, home-]ike resort where w^e might turn in to
renew from time to time the pleasant intercourse, to
continue the last conversation, and to compare anew
our readings and our experiences, the pleasant hour
of liking would ripen into a warm friendship.

" But in order that this may be made possible and
practicable, the utmost simplicity of entertainment
must prevail. In a French salon^ all is, to the last
degree, informal. The boiiilloire, the French tea-ket-
tle, is often tended by one of the gentlemen, who aids
his fair neighbors in the mysteries of tea-making.
One nymph is always to be found at the table dispens-
ing tea and talk ; and a basket of simple biscuit and
cakes, offered by another, is all the further repast.
The teacups and cake-basket are a real addition to
the scene, because they cause a little lively social
bustle, a little chatter and motion, — always of advan-
tage in breaking up stiffness, and giving occasion for
those graceful, airy nothings that answer so good a
purpose in facilitating acquaintance.

" Nothing can be more charming than the descrip-
tion which Edmond About gives, in his novel of
*Tolla,' of the reception evenings of an old noble
Roman family, — the spirit of repose and quietude

l82

The Chimney-Corner.

through all the apartments, — the ease of coming and
going, — the perfect homelike 'spirit in which the
guests settle themselves to any employment of the
hour that best suits them, — some to lively chat, some
to dreamy, silent lounging, some to a game, others, in
a distant apartment, to music, and others still to a
promenade along the terraces.

" One is often in a state of mind and nerves which
indisposes for the effort of active conversation; one
wishes to rest, to observe, to be amused without an
effort ; and a mansion which opens wide its hospitable
arms, and offers itself to you as a sort of home, where
you may rest, and do just as the humor suits you, is
a perfect godsend at such times. You are at home
there, your ways are understood, you can do as you
please, — come early or late, be brilliant or dull, —
you are always welcome. If you can do nothing for
the social whole to-night, it matters not. There are
many more nights to come in the future, and you are
entertained on trust, without a challenge.

" I have one friend, — a man of genius, subject to
the ebbs and flows of animal spirits which attend that
"--s^anization. Of general society he has a nervous
.iorror. A regular dinner or evening party is to him
a terror, an impossibility ; but there is a quiet parlor
where stands a much-worn old sofa, and it is his
delight to enter without knocking, and be found lying

How shall we entertain our Company? 183

with half-shut eyes on this friendly couch, while the
family life goes on around him without a question.
Nobody is to mind him, to tease him with inquiries or
salutations. If he will, he breaks into the stream of
conversation, and sometimes, rousing up from one of
these dreamy trances, finds himself, ere he or they
know how, in the mood for free and friendly talk.
People often wonder, * How do you catch So-and-so ?
He is so shy ! I have invited and invited, and he
never comes.' AVe never invite, and he comes. We
take no note of his coming or his going ; we do not
startle his entrance with acclamation, nor clog his
departure with expostulation ; it is fully understood
that with us he shall do just as he chooses ; and so
he chooses to do much that we like.

" The sum of this whole doctrine of society is, that
we are to try the value of all modes and forms of
social entertainment by their effect in producing real
acquaintance and real friendship and good-will. The
first and rudest form of seeking this is by a great
promiscuous party, which simply effects this, — that
people' at least see each other on the outside, and
eat together. Next come all those various forms of
reunion in which the entertainment consists of some-
thing higher than staring and eating, — some exercise
of the faculties of the guests in music, acting, recita-
tion, reading, etc. j and these are a great advance,

184 The Chimney-Co7iieK

because they show people what is in them, and thus
lay a foundation for a more intelligent appreciation
and acquaintance. These are the best substitute for
the expense, show, and trouble of large parties. They
are in their nature more refining and intellectual. It
is astonishing, when people really put together, in
soriie one club or association, all the different talents
for pleasing possessed by different persons, how clever
a circle may be gathered, — in the least promising
neighborhood. A club of ladies in one of our cities
has had quite a brilhant success. It is held every
fortnight at the house of the members, according to
alphabetical sequence. The lady who receives has
charge of arranging what the entertainment shall be,
— whether charade, tableau, reading, recitation, or
music ; and the interest is much increased by the
individual taste shown in the choice of the diversion
and the variety which thence follows.

*^In the summer time, in the country, open-air
reunions are charming forms of social entertainment.
Croquet parties, which bring young people together
by daylight for a healthy exercise, and end with a
moderate share of the evening, are a very desirable
amusement. AVhat are called * lawn teas ' are finding
great favor in England and some parts of our country.
They are simply an early tea enjoyed in a sort of
picnic style in the grounds about the house. Such an

How shall we entertain our Company? 185

entertainment enables one to receive a great many at
a time, without crowding, and, being in its very idea
rustic and informal, can be arranged with very little
expense or trouble. With the addition of lanterns in
the trees and a little music, this entertainment may
be carried on far into the evening with a very pretty
effect.

" As to dancing, I have this much to say of it.
Either our houses must be all built over and made
larger, or female crinolines must be made smaller, or
dancing must continue as it now is, the most absurd
and ungraceful of all attempts at amusement. The
effort to execute round dances in the limits of modern
houses, in the prevailing style of dress, can only lead
to developments more startling than agreeable. Dan-
cing in the open air, on the shaven green of lawns, is
a pretty and graceful exercise, and there only can full
sweep be allowed for the present feminine toilet.

" The English breakfast is an institution growing in
favor here, and rightfully, too ; for a party of fresh, -
good-natured, well-dressed people, assembled at
breakfast on a summer morning, is as nearly perfect
a form of reunion as can be devised. All are in full
strength from their night's rest ; the hour is fresh and
lovely, and they are in condition to give each other
the very, cream of their thoughts, the first keen
sparkle of the uncorked nervous system. The only

The Chimney-Corner,

drawback is, that, in our busy American life, the most
desirable gentlemen often cannot spare their morning
hours. Breakfast parties presuppose a condition of
leisure ; but when they can be compassed, they are
perhaps the most perfectly enjoyable of entertain-
ments."

" Well," said Marianne, " I begin to waver about
my party. I don't know, after all, but the desire of
paying off social debts prompted the idea ; perhaps
we might try some of the agreeable things suggested.
But, dear me ! there 's the baby. We '11 finish the
talk some other time."

VIIL

HOW SHALL WE BE AMUSED?

NE, two, three, four, — this makes the fifth

accident on the Fourth of July, in the two
papers I have just read," said Jenny.

" A very moderate allowance," said Theophilus
Thoro, " if you consider the Fourth as a great na-
tional saturnalia, in which every boy in the land has
the privilege of doing whatever is right in his own
eyes."

The poor boys ! " said Mrs. Crowfield. " All the
troubles of the world are laid at their door."

" Well," said Jenny, " they did burn the city of
Portland, it appears. The fire arose from fire-crackers,
thrown by boys among the shavings of a carpenter's
shop, — so says the paper."

" And," said Rudolph, " we surgeons expect a har-
vest of business from the Fourth, as surely as from a
battle. Certain to be woundings, fractures, possibly
amputations, following the proceedings of our glorious
festival."

i88

The Chiimiey-Corner,

"Why cannot we Americans learn to amuse our-
selves peaceably like other nations ? " said Bob
Stephens. " In France and Italy, the greatest nation-
al festivals pass off without fatal accident, or danger
to any one. The fact is, in our country we have not
learned how to he amused. Amusement has been
made of so small account in our philosophy of life,
that we are raw and unpractised in being amused.
Our diversions, compared with those of the politer
nations of Europe, are coarse and savage, — and con-
sist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturb-
ing the peace of the community by rude uproar. The
only idea an American boy associates with the Fourth
of July is that of gunpowder in some form, and a
wild liberty to fire off pistols in all miscellaneous
directions, and to throw fire-crackers under the heels
of horses, and into crowds of women and children,
for tfie fun of seeing the stir and commotion thus pro-
duced. Now take a young Parisian boy and give him
a fete, and he conducts himself with greater gentle-
ness and good breeding, because he is part of a com-
munity in which the art of amusement has been re-
fined and perfected, so that he has a thousand re-
sources beyond the very obvious one of making a
great banging and disturbance.

" Yes," continued Bob Stephens, " the fact is, that
our grim old Puritan fathers set their feet down reso-

How shall we be amused? 189

lately on all forms of amusement ; they would have
stopped the lambs from wagging their tails, and shot
the birds for singing, if they could have had their
way ; and in consequence of it, what a barren, cold,
flowerless life is our New England existence ! Life
is all, as Mantalini said, one *demd horrid grind/
' Nothing here but working and going to church,' said
the German emigrants, — and they were about right.
A French traveller, in the year 1837, says that attend-
ing the Thursday-evening lectures and church prayer-
meetings was the only recreation of the young people
of Boston; and we can remember the time when this
really was no exaggeration. Think of that, with all
the seriousness of our Boston east winds to give it
force, and fancy the provision for amusement in our
society ! The consequence is, that boys who have the
longing for amusement strongest within them, and
plenty of combativeness. to back it, are the standing
terror of good society, and our Fourth of July is a day
of fear to all invalids and persons of delicate nervous
organization, and of real, appreciable danger of life
and hmb to every one."

" Well, Robert," said my wife, " though I agree
with you as to the actual state of society in this
respect, I must enter my protest against your slur on
the memory of our Pilgrim fathers."

Yes," said Theophilus Thoro, " the New-England-

IQO The Chimitey-Corner,

ers are the only people, I believe, who take delight
in vilifying their ancestry. Every young hopeful in
our day makes a target of his grandfather's grave-
stone, and fires away", with great self-applause. Peo-
ple in general seem to like to show that they are
wxll-born, and come of good stock; but the young
New-Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleas-
ure in insisting that they came of a race of narrow-
minded, persecuting bigots.

" It is true, that our Puritan fathers saw not every-
thing. They made a state where there were no
amusements, but where people could go to bed and
leave their house doors wide open all night, without
a shadow of fear or danger, as was for years the
custom in all our country villages. The fact is, that
the simple early New England life, before we began
to import foreigners, realized a state of society in
whose possibility Europe would scarcely believe. If
our fathers had few amusements, they needed few.
Life was too really and solidly comfortable and happy
to need much amusement.

" Look over the countries where people are most
sedulously amused by their rulers and governors.
Are they not the countries where the people are most
oppressed, most unhappy in their circumstances, and
therefore in greatest need of amusement ? It is the
slave who dances and sings, and why ? Because he

How shall we be amused? 191

owns nothing, and can own nothing, and may as well
dance and forget the fact. But give the slave a farm
of his own, a wife of his own, and children of his own,
with a school-house and a vote, and ten to one he
dances no more. He needs no anmsementj because
he is happy,

" The legislators of Europe wished nothing more
than to bring up a people who would be content with
amusements, and not ask after their rights or think
too closely how they were governed. ' Gild the dome
of the Invalides,' was Napoleon's scornful prescrip-
tion, when he heard the Parisian population were dis-
contented. They gilded it, and the people forgot to
talk about anything else. They were a childish race,
educated from the cradle on spectacle and show, and
by the sight of their eyes could they be governed.
The people of Boston, in 1776, could not have been
managed in this way, chiefly because they were
brought up in the strict schools of the fathers."

" But don't you think,'' said Jenny, " that something
might be added and amended in the state of society
our fathers established here in New England ? With-
out becoming frivolous, there might be more attention
paid to rational amusement."

" Certainly," said my wife, " the State and the
Church both might take a lesson from the providence
of foreign governments, and make liberty, to say the

192 The Chim7iey-Corner,

least, as attractive as despotism. It is a very unwise
mother that does not provide her children with play-
things."

"And yet," said Bob, "the only thing that the
Church has yet done is to forbid and to frown. We
have abundance of tracts against dancing, whist-play-
ing, ninepins, billiards, operas, theatres, — in short,
anything that young people would be apt to like.
The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church
refused to testify against slavery, because of political
diffidence, but made up for it by ordering a more
stringent crusade against dancing. The theatre and
opera grow up and exist among us like plants on the
windy side of a hill, blown all awry by a constant
blast of conscientious rebuke. There is really no
amusement young people ^re fond of, which they do
not pursue, in a sort of defiance of the frown of the
peculiarly religious world. With all the telling of
what the young shall not do, there has been very little
telling what they shall do.

" The whole department of amusements — certainly
one of the most important in education — has been
by the Church made a sort of outlaws' ground, to be
taken possession of and held by all sorts of spiritual
ragamuffins ; and then the faults and short-comings
resulting from this arrangement have been held up
and insisted on as reasons why no Christian should
ever venture into it.

How shall we be amused f 193

"If the Church would set herself to amuse her
young folks, instead of discussing doctrines and meta-
physical hair-splitting, she would prpve herself a true
mother, and not a hard-visaged step-dame. Let her
keep this department, so powerful and so difficult to
manage, in what are morally the strongest hands,
instead of giving it up to the weakest.

" I think, if the different churches of a city, for
example, would rent a building where there should be
a billiard-table, one or two ninepin-alleys, a reading-
room, a garden and grounds for ball-playing or inno-
cent lounging, that they would do more to keep their
young people from the ways of sin than a Sunday
school could. Nay, more : I would go further. I
would have a portion of the building fitted up with
scenery and a stage, for the getting up of tableaux or
dramatic performances, and thus give scope for the
exercise of that histrionic talent of which there is so
much lying unemployed in society.

" Young people do not like amusements any better
for the wickedness connected with them. The spec-
tacle of a sweet little child singing hymns, and repeat-
ing prayers, of a pious old Uncle Tom. dying for his
religion, has filled theatres night after night, and
proved that there really is no need of indecent or
improper plays to draw full houses.

" The things that draw young people to places of
*9 M

194

The Chimney-Corner,

amusement are not at first gross things. Take the
most notorious pubhc place in Paris, — the Jardin
Mabille, for instance, — and the things which give it
ils first charm are all innocent and artistic. Exquisite
beds of lilies, roses, gillyflowers, lighted with jets of
gas so artfully as to make every flower translucent as
a gem ; fountains where the gas-light streams out from
behind misty wreaths of falling water and calla-blos-
soms ; sofas of velvet turf, canopied with fragrant
honeysuckle ; dim bowers overarched with lilacs and
roses ; a dancing ground under trees whose branches
bend with a fruitage of many-colored lamps ; enchant-
ing music and graceful motion ; in all these there is
not only no sin, but they are really beautiful and
desirable ; and if they were only used on the side and
in the service of virtue and religion, if they were con-
trived and kept up by the guardians and instructors
of youth, instead of by those whose interest it is to
demoralize and destroy, young people would have no
temptation to stray into the haunts of vice.

In Prussia, under the reign of Frederick William
II., when one good, hard-handed man governed the
whole country like a strict schoolmaster, the public
amusements for the people were made such as to pre-
sent a model for all states. The theatres were strictly
supervised, and actors obliged to conform to the rules
of decorum and morality. The plays and perform-

How shall we be amused? 195

ances were under the immediate supervision of men
of grave morals, who allowed nothing corrupting to
appear; and the effect of this administration and
restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day.
The public gardens are full of charming little resorts,
where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one
can have either a concert of good music, or a very
fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole
families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome
and refreshing entertainment, — the mother and aunts
with their knitting, the baby, the children of all ages,
and the father, — their faces radiant with that mild
German light of contentment and good-will which one
feels to be characteristic of the nation. When I saw
these things, and thought of our own outcast, unpro-
vided boys and young men, haunting the streets and
alleys of cities, in places far from the companionship
of mothers and sisters, I felt as if it would be better
for a nation to be brought up by a good strict school-
master king than to try to be a republic."

"Yes," said "but the difficulty is to get the good
schoolmaster king. For one good shepherd, there
are twenty who use the sheep only for their flesh and
their wool. Republics can do all that kings can, —
witness our late army and Sanitary Commission.
Once fix the idea thoroughly in the public mind that
there ought to be as regular and careful provision for

196

The Chimney-Corner.

public amusement as there is for going to church and
Sunday school, and it will be done. Central Park in
New York is a beginning in the right direction,, and
Brooklyn is following the example of her sister city.
There is, moreover, an indication of the proper spirit
in the increased efforts that are made to beautify Sun-
day-school rooms, and make them interesting, and to
have Sunday-school fetes and picnics, — the most
harmless and commendable way of celebrating the
Fourth of July. AVhy should saloons and bar-rooms
be made attractive by fine paintings, choice music,
flowers, and fountains, and Sunday-school rooms be
four bare walls ? There are churches whose broad
aisles represent ten and twenty millions of dollars, and
whose sons and daughters are daily draw^n to circuses,
operas, theatres, because they have tastes and feelings,
in themselves perfectly laudable and innocent, for the
gratification of which no provision is made in any
other place."

" I know one church," said Rudolph, " whose Sun-
day-school room is as beautifully adorned as any
haunt of sin. There is a fountain in the centre,
which plays into a basin surrounded with shells and
flowers; it has a small organ to lead the children's
voices, and the walls are hung with oil-paintings and
engravings from the best masters. The festivals of
the Sabbath school, which are from time to time held

How shall we he amused f 197

in this place, educate the taste of the children, as well
as amuse them ; and, above all, they have through
life the advantage of associating with their early relig-
ious education all those ideas of taste, elegance, and
artistic culture which too often come through polluted
channels.

" When the ajnusement of the young shall become
the care of the experienced and the wise, and the
floods of wealth that are now rolling over and over,
in silent investments, shall be put into the form of
innocent and refined pleasures for the children and
youth of the state, our national festivals may become
days to be desired, and not dreaded.

'^On the Fourth of July, our city fathers do in a
certain dim wise perceive that the public owes some
attempt at amusement to its children, and they- vote
large sums, principally expended in bell-ringing, can-
nons, and fireworks. . The side-walks are witness to
the number who fall victims to the temptations held
out by grog-shops and saloons ; and the papers, for
weeks after, are crowded with accounts of accidents.
Now, a yearly sum expended to keep up, and keep
pure, places of amusement which hold out no tempta-
tion to vice, but which excel all vicious places in real
beauty and attractiveness, would greatly lessen the
sum needed to be expended on any one particular
day, and would refine and prepare our people to keep
holidays and festivals appropriately."

198 The Chimney-Corner,

" For my part," said Mrs. Crowfield, " I am grieved
at the opprobrium which falls on the race of hoys.
Why should the most critical era in the life of those
who are to be men, and to govern society, be passed in
a sort of outlawry, — a rude warfare with all existing
institutions ? The years between ten and twenty are
full of the nervous excitability which marks the growth
and maturing of the manly nature. The boy feels
wild impulses, which ought to be vented in legitimate
and healthful exercise. He wants to run, shout,
wrestle, ride, row, skate ; and all these together are
often not sufficient to relieve the need he feels of
throwing off the excitability that burns within.

" For the wants of this period what safe provision is
made by the Church, or by the State, or any of the
boy's lawful educators ? In all the Prussian schools
amusements are as much a part of the regular school-
system as grammar or geography. The teacher is
with the boys on the play-ground, and plays as heart-
ily as any of them. The boy has his physical wants
anticipated. He is not left to fight his way, blindly
stumbling against society, but goes forward in a safe
path, which his elders and betters have marked out
for him.

" In our country, the boy's career is often a series
of skirmishes with society. He wants to skate, and
contrives ingeniously to dam the course of a brook,

How shall we be amused f 199

and flood a meadow which makes a splendid skating-
ground. Great is the joy for a season, and great the
skating. But the water floods the neighboring cel-
lars. The boys are cursed through all the moods and
tenses, — boys are such a plague ! • The dam is torn
down with emphasis and execration. The boys, how-
ever, lie in wait some cold night, between twelve and
one, and build it up again ; and thus goes on the bat-
tle. The boys care not whose cellar they flood, be-
cause nobody cares for their amusement. They un-
derstand themselves to be outlaws, and take an out-
law's advantage.

"Again, the boys have their sleds ; and sliding
down hill is splendid fun. But they trip up some
grave citizen, who sprains his shoulder. What is the
result? Not the provision of a safe, good place,
where boys may slide down hill without danger to
any one, but an edict forbidding all sliding, under
penalty of fine.

" Boys want to swim : it is best they should swim ;
and if city fathers, foreseeing and caring for this want,
should think it worth while to mark off some good
place, and have it under such police surveillance as
to enforce decency of language and demeanor, they
would prevent a great deal that now is disagreeable in
the unguided efforts of boys to enjoy this luxury.

" It would be cheaper in the end, even if one had to

200

The Chimney-Corner,

build sliding-piles, as they do in Russia, or to build
skating-rinks, as they do in Montreal, — it would be
cheaper for every city, town, and village to provide
legitimate amusement for'bcys, under proper superin-
tendence, than to leave them, as they are now left, to
fight their way against society.

" In the boys' academies of our country, what pro-
vision is made for amusement ? There are stringent
rules, and any number of them, to prevent boys mak-
ing any noise that may disturb the neighbors ; and
generally the teacher thinks that, if he keeps the boys
stilly and sees that they get their lessons, his duty is
done. But a hundred boys ought not to be kept still.
There ought to be noise and motion among them,
in order that they may healthily survive the great
changes which Nature is working within them. If
they become silent, averse to movement, fond of in-
door lounging and warm rooms, they are going in far
worse ways than any amount of outward lawlessness
could bring them .to.

" Smoking and yellow-covered novels are worse
than any amount of hullabaloo ; and the quietest boy
is often a poor, ignorant victim, whose life is being
drained out of him before it is well begun. If moth-
ers could only see the series of hooks that are sold be-
hind counters to boarding-school boys, whom nobody
warns and nobody cares for, — if they could see the

How shall we be amused? 201

poison, going from pillow to pillow, in books pretend-
ing to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our
nature, but trailing them over with the filth of utter
corruption ! These horrible works are the inward and
secret channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by
the pressure of strict outward rules, forbidding that
physical and out-of-door exercise and motion to
which he ought rather to be encouraged, and even
driven.

" It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teach-
ers, and churches make no provision for boys in the
way of amusement, the world, the flesh, and the Devil
are incessantly busy and active in giving it to them.
There are ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar.
There are billiard-saloons, with a bar, and, alas !
with the occasional company of girls who are still
beautiful, but who have lost the innocence of woman-
hood, while yet retaining many of its charms. There
are theatres, with a bar, and with the society of lost
women. The boy comes to one and all of these pla-
ces, seeking only what is natural and proper he should
have, -—what should be given him under the eye and
by the care of the Church, the school. He comes for
exercise and amusement, — he gets these, and a ticket
to destruction besides, — and whose fault is it ?

" These are the aspects of public life," said I,
which make me feel that we never shall have a per-
0* •

202

The Chhnney-Corner.

feet state till women vote and bear rule equally with
men. State housekeeping has been, hitherto, like
what any housekeeping would be, conducted by the
voice and knowledge of man alone.

" If women had an equal voice in the management
of our public money, I have faith to believe that thou-
sands v/hich are now wasted in mere political charla-
tanism would go to provide for the rearing of the
children of the state, male and female. My wife has
spoken for the boys ; I speak for the girls also. What
is provided for their physical development and amuse-
ment ? Hot, gas-lighted theatric and operatic perform-
ances, beginning at eight, and ending at midnight ;
hot, crowded parties and balls ; dancing with dresses
tightly laced over the laboring lungs, — these are al-
most the whole story. I bless the advent of croquet
and skating. And yet the latter exercise, pursued as
it generally is, is a most terrible exposure. There is
no kindly parental provision for the poor, thoughtless,
delicate young creature, — not even the shelter of a
dressing-room with a fire, at which she may w^arm her
numb fingers and put on her skates when she arrives
on the ground, and to which she may retreat in inter-
vals of fatigue ; so she catches cold, and perhaps sows
the seed which with air-tight stoves and other appli-
ances of hot-house culture may ripen into consump-
tion.

How shall we be amused? 203

" What provision is there for the amusement of all
the shop girls, seamstresses, factory girls, that crowd
our cities ? What for the thousands of young clerks
and operatives ? Not long since, in a respectable old
town in New England, the body of a beautiful girl
was drawn from the river in which she had drowned
herself, — a young girl only fifteen, who came to the
city, far from home and parents, and fell a victim to
the temptation which brought her to shame and des-
peration. Many thus fall every year w^ho are never
counted. They fall into the ranks of those whom the
world abandons as irreclaimable.

" Let those who have homes and every appliance to
make life pass agreeably, and who yet yawn over an
unoccupied evening, fancy a lively young girl all day
cooped up at sewing in a close, ill-ventilated room.
Evening comes, and she has three times the desire for
amusement and three times the need of it that her
fashionable sister has. And where can she go ? To
the theatre, perhaps, with some young man as thought-
less as herself, and more depraved ; then to the bar
for a glass of wine, and another ; and then, with a
head swimming and turning, who shall say where
else she may be led ? Past midnight and no one to
look after her, — and one night ruins her utterly and
for life, and she as yet only a child !

" John Newton had a very wise saying : ' Here is a

204

The Chi7nney-Corner,

man trying to fill a bushel with chaff. Now if I fill it
with wheat first, it is better than to fight him.' This
apothegm contains in it the whole of what I would say
on the subject of amusernents."

IX.

DRESS, OR WHO MAKES THE FASHIONS.

THE door of my study being open, I heard in the
distant parlor a sort of flutter of silken wings,
and chatter of bird-like voices, which told me that a
covey of Jennie's pretty young street birds had just
alighted there. I could not forbear a peep at the rosy
faces that glanced out under pheasants' tails, doves'
wings, and nodding humming-birds, and made one or
two errands in that direction only that I might gratify
my eyes with a look at them.

Your nice young girl, of good family and good
breeding, is always a pretty object, and, for my part, I
regularly lose my heart (in a sort of figurative way) to
every fresh, charming creature that trips across my
path. All their mysterious rattle-traps and whirligigs,

— their curls and networks and crimples and rimples
and crisping-pins, — their little absurdities, if you will,

— have to me a sort of charm, like the tricks and
stammerings of a curly-headed child. I should have

206

The Chimney-Corner,

made a very poor censor if I had been put in Cato's
place : the witches would have thrown all my wisdom
into some private chip-basket of their own, and walked
off with it in triumph. Never a girl bows to me that
I do not see in her eye a tv^inkle of confidence that
she could, if she chose, make an old fool of me. I
surrender at discretion on first sight.

Jennie's friends are nice girls, — the flowers of good,
staid, sensible families, — not heathen blossoms nursed
in the hot-bed heat of wild, high-flying, fashionable
society. They have been duly and truly taught and
brought up, by good mothers and painstaking aunties,
to understand in their infancy that handsome is that
handsome does ; that little girls must not be vain of
their pretty red shoes and nice curls, and must remem-
ber that it is better to be good than to be handsome ;
with all other wholesome truisms of the kind. They
have been to school, and had their minds improved in
all modern ways, — have calculated eclipses, and read
Virgil, Schiller, and La Fontaine, and understand all
about the geological strata, and the different systems
of metaphysics, — so that a person reading the list of
their acquirements might be a little appalled at the
prospect of entering into conversation with them.
For all these reasons I Hstened quite indulgently to
the animated conversation that was going on about
— Well !

Dress,

207

What do girls generally talk about, when a knot of
them get together ? Not, I believe, about the sources
of the Nile, or the precession of the equinoxes, or the
nature of the human understanding, or Dante, or
Shakespeare, or Milton, although they have learned
all about them in school ; but upon a theme much
nearer and dearer, — the one all-pervading feminine
topic ever since Eve started the first toilet of fig-
leaves ; and as I caught now and then a phrase of
their chatter, I jotted it down in pure amusement,
giving to each charming speaker the name of the bird
under whose colors she was sailing.

"For my part," said little Humming-Bird, '^I'm
quite worn out with sewing; the fashions are all so
different from what they were last year, that everything
has to be made over."

"Isn't it dreadful!" said Pheasant "There's
my new mauve silk dress ! it was a very expensive
silk, and I have n't worn it more than three or four
times, and it really looks quite dowdy ; and I can't
get Patterson to do it over for me for this party.
Well, really, I shall have to give up company because
I have nothing to wear."

" Who does set the fashions, I wonder," said Hum-
ming-Bird ; " they seem nowadays to whirl faster and
faster, till really they don't leave one time for any-
thing."

208

The Chimney-Corner.

"Yes," said Dove, "I haven't a moment for read-
ing, or drawing, or keeping up my music. The fact is,
nowadays, to keep one's self properly dressed is all
one can do. If I were graiide dame now, and had
only to send an order to my milliner and dressmaker,
I might be beautifully dressed all the time without
giving much thought to it myself ; and that is what 1
should like. But this constant planning about one's
toilet, changing your buttons and your fringes and
your bonnet-trimmings and your hats eveiy other day,
and then being behindhand ! It is really too fa-
tiguing."

" Well," said Jennie, " I never pretend to keep up.
I never expect to be in the front rank of fashion, but
no girl wants to be behind every one ; nobody wants
to have people say, 'Do see what an old-times,. rub-
bishy looking creature that is.' And now, with my
small means and my conscience, (for I have a con-
science in this matter, and don't wish to spend any
more time and money than is needed to keep one's
self fresh and tasteful,) I find my dress quite a fa-
tiguing care."

" Well, now, girls," said Humming-Bird, " do you
really know, I have sometimes thought I should like
to be a nun, just to get rid of all this labor. If I
once gave up dress altogether, and knew I was to
have nothingr^but one plain robe tied round my waist

Dress,

209

with a cord, it does seem to me as if it would be a
perfect repose, — only one is a Protestant, you know."

Now, as Humming-Bird was the most notoriously
dressy individual in the little circle, this suggestion
was received with quite a laugh. But Dove took it
up.

"Well, really," she said, "when dear Mr. S

preaches those saintly sermons to us about our bap-
tismal vows, and the nobleness of an umvorldly life,
and calls on us to live for something purer and higher
than we are living for, I confess that sometimes all
my life seems to me a mere sham, — that I am going
to church, and saying solemn words, and being wrought
up by solemn music, and uttering most solemn vows
and prayers, all to no purpose ; and then I come away
and look at my life, all resolving itself into a fritter
about dress, and sewing-silk, cord, braid, and buttons,
— the next fashion of bonnets, — how to make my
old dresses answer instead of new, — how to keep the
air of the world, while in my heart I am cherishing
something higher and better. If there 's anything I
detest it is hypocrisy ; and sometimes the life I lead
looks like it. But how to get out of it ? what to do ? "

" I ^m sure," said Humming-Bird, " that taking care
of my clothes and going into company is, frankly, all
I do. If I go to parties, as other girls do, and make
calls, and keep dressed, — you know papa is not rich,

N

2IO

The Chimney-Corner,

and one must do these things economically, — it
really does take all the time I have. When I was
confirmed the Bishop talked to us so sweetly, and I
really meant sincerely to be a good girl, — to be as
good as I knew how ; but now, when they talk about
fighting the good fight and running the Christian race,
I feel very mean and little, for I am quite sure this
is n't doing it. But what is, — and who is ? "

" Aunt Betsey Titcomb is doing it, I suppose," said
Pheasant.

" Aunt Betsey ! " said Humming-Bird, " well, she
is. She spends alt her money in doing good. She
goes round visiting the poor all the time. She is a
perfect saint ; — but O girls, how she looks ! Well,
now, I confess, when I think I must look like Aunt
Betsey, my courage gives out. Is it necessary to go
without hoops, and look like a dipped candle, in order
to be unworldly ? Must one wear such a fright of a
bonnet ? "

No," said Jennie, I think not. ' I think Miss
Betsey Titcomb, good as she is, injures the cause of
goodness by making it outwardly repulsive. I really
think, if she would take some pains with her dress,
and spend upon her own wardrobe a little of the
money she gives away, that she might have influence
in leading others to higher aims ; now all her influ-
ence is against it. Her outre and repulsive exterior

Dress,

211

arrays our natural and innocent feelings against good-
ness; for surely it is natural and innocent to wish to
look well, and I am really afraid a great many of us
are more afraid of being thought ridiculous than of
being wicked.'^

" And after all," said Pheasant, " you know Mr. St.
Clair says, ^ Dress is one of the fine arts,' and if it
is, why of course we ought to cultivate it. Certainly,
well-dressed men and women are more agreeable ob-
jects than rude and unkempt ones. There must be
somebody whose mission it is to preside over the
agreeable arts of life ; and I suppose it falls to ' us
girls.' That 's the way I comfort myself, at all events.
Then I must confess that I do like dress ; I 'm not
cultivated enough to be a painter or a poet, and I have
all my artistic nature, such as it is, in dress. I love
harmonies of color, exact shades and matches ; I love
to see a uniform idea carried all through a woman's
toilet, — her dress, her bonnet, her gloves, her shoes,
her pocket-handkerchief and cuffs, her very parasol,
all in correspondence."

" Bujt my dear," said Jennie, " anything of this kind
must take a fortune ! "

" And if I had a fortune, I 'm pretty sure I should
spend a good deal of it in this way," said Pheasant.
" I can imagine such completeness of toilet as I have
never seen. How I would like the means to show

212

The Chimney-Corner,

what I could do ! My life, now, is perpetual disquiet.
I always feel shabby. My things must all be bought
at hap-hazard, as they can be got out of my poor little
allowance, — and things are getting so horridly dear !
Only think of it, girls ! gloves at two and a quarter !
and boots at seven, eight, and ten dollars ! and then,
as you say, the fashions changing so ! Why, I bought
a sack last fall and gave forty dollars for it, and this
winter I 'm wearing it, to be sure, but it has no style
at all, — looks quite antiquated ! "

"Now I say," said Jennie, " that you are really mor-
bid on the subject of dress ; you are fastidious and par-
ticular and exacting in your ideas in a way that really
ought to be put down. There is not a girl of our
set that dresses as nicely as you do, except Emma Sey-
ton, and her father, you know, has no end of income."

" Nonsense, Jennie," said Pheasant. " I think I
really look like a beggar ; but then, I bear it as well
as I can, because, you see, I know papa does all for us
he can, and I won't be extravagant. But I do think,
as Humming-Bird says, that it would be a great relief
to give it up altogether and retire from the world ; or,
as Cousin John says, climb a tree and pull it up after
you, and so be in peace."

" Well," said Jennie, " all this seems to have come
on since the war. It seems to me that not only has
everything doubled in price, but all the habits of the

Dress,

213

world seem to require that you shall have double the
quantity of everything. Two or three years ago a
good balmoral skirt was a fixed fact ; it was a conven-
ient thing for sloppy, unpleasant weather. But now,
dear me ! there is no end to them. They cost fifteen
and twenty dollars ; and girls that I know have one
or two every season, besides all sorts of quilled and
embroidered and ruffled and tucked and flounced ones.
Then, in dressing one's hair, what a perfect overflow
there is of all manner of waterfalls, and braids, and
rats and mice, and curls, and combs j when three or
four years ago we combed our own hair innocently
behind our ears, and put flowers in it, and thought we
looked nicely at our evening parties ! I don't believe
we look any better now, when we are dressed, than
we did then, — so what 's the use ? "

" Well, did you ever see such a tyranny as this of
fashion ? " said Humming-Bird. " We know it 's silly,
but we all bow down before it ; we are afraid of our
lives before it ; and who makes all this and sets it
going ? The Paris milliners, the Empress, or who ? ''

" The question where fashions come from is like the
question where pins go to," said Pheasant. Think
of the thousands and millions of pins that are being
used every year, and not one of them worn out.
Where do they all go to ? One would expect to find
a pin mine somewhere."

214

The Chininey-Ccrner,

"Victor Hugo says they go into the sewers in
Paris," said Jennie.

"And the fashions come from a source about as
pure," said I, from the„ next room.

" Bless me, Jennie, do tell us if your father has been
listening to us all this time ! " was the next exclama-
tion ; and forthwith there was a whir and rustle of
the silken wings, as the whole troop fluttered into my
study.

"Now, Mr. Crowfield, you are too bad!" said
Humming-Bird, as she perched upon a corner of my
study-table, and put her little feet upon an old " Frois-
sart " which filled the arm-chair.

" To be listening to our nonsense ! " said Pheas-
ant.

" Lying in wait for us ! " said Dove.

"Well, now, you have brought us all down on
you," said Humming-Bird, " and you won't find it so
easy to be rid of us. You will have to answer all our
questions."

" My dears, I am at your service, as far as mortal
man may be," said I.

"Well, then," said Humming-Bird, "tell us all
about everything, — how things come to be as they
are. Who makes the fashions ? "

" I believe it is universally admitted that, in the
matter of feminine toilet, France rules the world,"
said I.

Dress,

215

" But who rules France ? " said Pheasant. " Who
decides what the fashions shall be there?"

" It is the great misfortune of the civilized world,
at the present hour/' said I, " that the state of mor-
als in France is apparently at the very lowest ebb,
and consequently the leadership of fashion is entirely
in the hands of a class of women who could not be
admitted into good society, in any country. Women
who can never have the name of wife, — who know
none of the ties of family, — these are the dictators
whose dress and equipage and appointments give the
law, first to France, and through France to the civil-
ized world. Such was the confession of Monsieur
Dupin, made in a late speech before the French Sen-
ate, and acknowledged, with murmurs of assent on all
sides, to be the truth. This is the reason why the
fashions have such an utter disregard of all those
laws of prudence and economy which regulate the
expenditures of families. They are made by women
whose sole and only hold on life is personal attrac-
tiveness, and with whom to keep this up, at any cost,
is a desperate necessity. No moral quality, no asso-
ciation of purity, truth, modesty, self-denial, or family
love, comes in to hallow the atmosphere about them,
and create a sphere of loveliness which brightens as
mere physical beauty fades. The ravages of time and
dissipation must be made up by an unceasing study of

2l6

The Chimrtey-CorneK

the arts of the toilet. Artists of all sorts, moving in
their train, rack all the stores of ancient and modern
art for the picturesque, the dazzling, the grotesque ;
and so, lest these Circes of society should carry all
before them, and enchant every husband, brother, and
lover, the staid and lawful Penelopes leave the hearth
and home to follow in their triumphal march and imi-
tate their arts. Thus it goes in France ; and in Eng-
land, virtuous and domestic princesses and peeresses
must take obediently what has been decreed by their
rulers in the demi-monde of France 3 and we in
America have leaders of fashion, who make it their
pride and glory to turn New York into Paris, and to
keep even step with everything that is going on there.
So the whole world of woman-kind is marching under
the command of these leaders. The love of dress
and glitter and fashion is getting to be a morbid, un-
healthy epidemic, which really eats away the noble-
ness and purity of women.

"In France, as Monsieur Dupin, Edmond About,
and Michelet tell us, the extravagant demands of
love for dress lead women to contract debts unknown
to their husbands, and sign obligations which are paid
by the sacrifice of honor, and thus the purity of the
family is continually undermined. In England there
is a voice of complaint, sounding from the leading
periodicals, that the extravagant demands of female

Dress,

217

fashion are bringing distress into families, and making
marriages impossible ; and something of the same sort
seems to have begun here. We are across the Atlan-
tic, to be sure ; but we feel the swirl and drift of the
great whirlpool ; only, fortunately, we are far enough
off to be able to see whither things are tending, and
to stop ourselves if we will.

" We have just come through a great struggle, in
which our women have borne an heroic part, — have
shown themselves capable of any kind of endurance
and self-sacrifice ; and now we are in that reconstruc-
tive state which makes it of the greatest consequence
to ourselves and the world that we understand our
own institutions and position, and learn that, instead
of following the corrupt and worn-out ways of the Old
World, we are called on to set the example of a new
state of society, — noble, simple, pure, and religious ;
and women can do more towards this even than men,
for women are the real architects of society.

"Viewed in this light, even the small, frittering
cares of woman's life — the attention to buttons, trim-'
mings, thread, and sewing-silk — may be an expres-
sion of their patriotism and their religion. A noble-
hearted woman puts a noble meaning into even the
commonplace details of hfe. The women of America
can, if they choose, hold back their country from fol-
lowing in the wake of old, corrupt, worn-out, effeminate
10

2i8 ' The Chimney-Corner,

European society, and make America the leader of
the world in all that is good."

" I 'm sure," said Humming-Bird, " we all would
like to be noble and heroic. During the war, I did so
long to be a man ! I" felt so poor and insignificant
because I was nothing but a girl ! "

" Ah, well," said Pheasant, " but then one wants to
do something worth doing, if one is going to do any-
thing. One would like to be grand and heroic, if one
could j but if not, why try at all ? One wants to be
very something, very great, very heroic ; or if not that,
then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is
this everlasting mediocrity that bores me."

" Then, I suppose, you agree with the man we read
of, who buried his one talent in the earth, as hardly
worth caring for."

"To say the truth, I always had something of a
sympathy for that man," said Pheasant. "I can't
enjoy goodness and heroism in homoeopathic doses.
I want something appreciable. What I can do, being
a woman, is a very different thing from what I should
try to do if I were a man, and had a man's chances :
it is so much less — so poor — that it is scarcely
worth trying for."

" You remember," said I, " the apothegm of one of
the old divines, that if two angels were sent down
from heaven, the one to govern a kingdom, and the

Dress,

219

other to sweep a street, they would not feel any dis-
position to change works/'

" Well, that just shows that they are angels, and
not mortals," said Pheasant ; " but we poor human
beings see, things differently."

Yet, my child, what could Grant or Sherman have
done, if it had not been for the thousands of brave
privates who were content to do each their impercep-
tible little, — if it had not been for the poor, unno-
ticed, faithful, never-failing common soldiers, who did
the work and bore the suffering ? No one man saved
our country, or could save it; nor could the men
have saved it without the women. Every mother that
said to her son. Go ; every wife that strengthened the
hands of her husband ; every girl who sent courageous
letters to her betrothed ; every woman who worked
for a fair ; every grandam whose trembling hands knit
stockings and scraped lint; every little maiden who
hemmed shirts and made comfort-bags for soldiers, —
each and all have been the joint doers of a great
lieroic work, the doing of which has been the regen-
eration of our era. A whole generation has l#arned
the luxury of thinking heroic thoughts and being con-
versant with heroic deeds, and I have faith to believe
that all this is not to go out in a mere crush of fash-
ionable luxury and folly and frivolous emptiness, —
but that our girls are going to merit the high praise

220 The Chimney-Corner.

given us by De Tocqueville, when he placed first
among the causes of our prosperity the noble character
of American women. Because foolish female persons
in New York are striving to outdo the demi-monde of
Paris in extravagance, it must not follow that every
sensible and patriotic matron, and every nice, modest
young girl, must forthwith, and without inquiry, rush
as far after them as they possibly can. Because Mrs.
Shoddy opens a ball in a two-thousand-dollar lace
dress, every girl in the land need not look with shame
on her modest white muslin. Somewhere between
the fast women of Paris and the daughters of Christian
American families there should be established a cor-
don sanitaire, to keep out the contagion of manners,
customs, and habits with which a noble-minded, re-
ligious democratic people ought to have nothing to
do."

" Well now, Mr. Crowfield," said the Dove, " since
you speak us so fair, and expect so much of us, we
must of course try not to fall below your compli-
ments ; but, after all, tell us what is the right standard
about*dress. Now we have daily lectures about this
at home. Aunt Maria says that she never saw such
times as these, when mothers and daughters, church-
members and worldly people, all seem to be going
one way, and sit down together and talk, as they will,
on dress and fashion, — how to have this made and

Dress,

221

that altered. We used to be taught, she said, that
church-members had higher things to think of, — that
their thoughts ought to be fixed on something better,
and that they ought to restrain the vanity and world-
liness of children and young people ; but now, she
says, even before a girl is born, dress is the one thing
needful, — the great thing to be thought of; and so,
in every step of the way upward, her little shoes, and
her little bonnets, and her little dresses, and her
corals and her ribbons, are constantly being discussed
in her presence, as the one all-important object of
life. Aunt Maria thinks mamma is dreadful, because
she has maternal yearnings over our toilet successes
and fortunes ; and w^e secretly think Aunt Maria is
rather soured by old age, and has forgotten how a girl
feels."

" The fact is," said I, " that the love of dress and
outside show has been always such an exacting and
absorbing tendency, that it seems to have furnished
work for religionists and economists, in all ages, to
keep it within bounds. Various religious bodies, at
the outset, adopted severe rules in protest against it.
The Quakers and the Methodists prescribed certain
fixed modes of costume as a barrier against its frivoli-
ties and follies. In the Romish Church an entrance
on any religious order prescribed entire and total
renunciation of all thought and care for the beautiful

222^ The Chimney-Corner,

in person or apparel, as the first step towards saint-
ship. The costume of the religieiise seemed to be
purposely intended to imitate the shroudings and
swathings of a corpse and the lugubrious color of a
pall, so as forever to remind the wearer that she was
dead to the world of ornament and physical beauty.
All great Christian preachers and reformers have
levelled their artillery against the toilet, from the time
of St. Jerome downward ; and Tom Moore has put
into beautiful and graceful verse St. Jerome's admoni-
tions to the fair church-goers of his time.

'WHO IS THE MAID?

*ST. JEROME'S LOVE.

* Who is the maid my spirit seeks,

Through cold reproof and slander's blight ?
Has she Love's roses on her cheeks ?

Is hers an eye of this world's light ?
No : wan and sunk with midnight prayer

Are the pale looks of her I love ;
Or if, at times, a light be there,

Its beam is kindled from above.

* I chose not her, my heart's elect,

From those who seek their Maker's shrine
In gems and garlands proudly decked,

As if themselves were things divine.
No : Heaven but faintly warms the breast

That beats beneath a broidered veil ;

Dress,

223

And she who comes in glittering vest
To mourn her frailty still is frail.

* Not so the faded form I prize

And love, because its bloom is gone ;
The glory in those sainted eyes

Is all the grace her brow puts on.
And ne'er was Beauty's dawn so bright,

So touching, as that form's decay,
Which, like the altar's trembling light,

In holy lustre wastes away.'

" But the defect of all these modes of warfare on
the elegances and refinements of the toilet was that
they were too indiscriminate. They were in reality
founded on a false principle. They took for granted
that there was something radically corrupt and wicked
in the body and in the physical system. According
to this mode of viewing things, the body was a loath-
some and pestilent prison, in which the soul was
locked up and enslaved, and the eyes, the ears, the
taste, the smell, were all so many corrupt traitors in
conspiracy to poison her. Physical beauty of every
sort was a snare, a Circean enchantment, to be
valiantly contended with and straitly eschewed.
Hence they preached, not moderation, but total
abstinence from all pursuit of physical grace and
beauty.

"Now, a^ resistance founded on an over-statement

224. 1^^^ Chimney-CorneK

is constantly tending to reaction. People always
have a tendency to begin thinking for themselves :
and when they so think, they perceive that a good
and wise God would not have framed our bodies with
such exquisite care only to corrupt our souls, — that
physical beauty, being created in such profuse abun-
dance around us, and we being possessed with such a
longing for it, must have its uses, its legitimate sphere
of exercise. Even the poor, shrouded nun, as she
walks the convent garden, cannot help asking herself
why, if the crimson velvet of the rose was made by
God, all colors except black and white are sinful for
her j and the modest Quaker, after hanging all her
house and dressing all her children in drab, cannot
but marvel at the sudden outstreaking of blue and
yellow and crimson in the tulip-beds under her win-
dow, and reflect how very differently the great .All-
Father arrays the world's housekeeping. The conse-
quence of all this has been, that the reforms based
upon these severe and exclusive views have gradually
gone backward. The Quaker dress is imperceptibly
and gracefully melting away into a refined simplicity
of modern costume, which in many cases seems to be
the perfection of taste. The obvious reflection, that
one color of the rainbow is quite as much of God as
another, has led the children of gentle dove-colored
mothers to appear in shades of rose-color, blue, and

Dress.

225

lilac; and wise elders have said, it is not so much the
color or the shape that we object to, as giving too
much time and too much money, — if the heart be
right with God and man, the bonnet ribbon may be
of any shade you please."

But don't you think," said Pheasant, " that a cer-
tain fixed dress, marking the unworldly character of
a religious order, is desirable? Now, I have said
before that I am very fond of dress. I have a passion
for beauty and completeness in it ; and as long as I
am in the world and obliged to dress as the world
does, it constantly haunts me, and tempts me to give
more time, more thought, more money, to these
things than I really think they are worth. But I can
conceive of giving up this thing altogether as being
much easier than regulating it to the precise point.
I never read of a nun's taking the veil, without a
certain thrill of sympathy. To cut off one's hair, to
take off and cast from her, one by one, all one's
trinkets and jewels, to lie down and have the pall
thrown over one, and feel one's self, once for all, dead
to the world, — I cannot help feeling as if this were
real, thorough, noble renunciation, and as if one
might rise up from it with a grand, calm consciousness
of having risen to a higher and purer atmosphere,
and got above all the littlenesses and distractions
that beset us here. So I have heard charming young
10* o

4

226

The Chimney-Corner,

Quaker girls, who, in more thoughtless days, indulged
in what for them was a slight shading of worldly
conformity, say that it was to them a blessed rest
when they put on the strict, plain dress, and felt that
they really had taken up the cross and, turned their
backs on the world. I can conceive of doing this,
much more easily than I can of striking the exact line
between worldly conformity and noble aspiration, in
the life I live now."

" My dear child," said I, " we all overlook one
great leading principle of our nature;, and that is, that
we are made to find a higher pleasure in self-sacrifice
than in any form of self-indulgence. There is some-
thing grand and pathetic in the idea of an entire self-
surrender, to which every human soul leaps up, as we
do to the sound of martial music.

" How many boys of Boston and New York, who
had lived effeminate and idle lives, felt this new power
uprising in them in our war ! How they embraced
the dirt and discomfort and fatigue and watchings and
toils of camp-life with an eagerness of zest which they
had never felt in the pursuit of mere pleasure, and
wrote home burning letters that they never were so
happy in their lives ! It was not that dirt and fatigue
and discomfort and watchings and weariness were in
themselves agreeable, but it was a joy to feel them-
selves able to bear all and surrender all for something

Dress, 227

higher than self. Many a poor Battery bully of New-
York, many a street rowdy, felt uplifted by the dis-
covery that he too had hid away under the dirt and
dust of his former life this divine and precious jewel.
He leaped for joy to find that he too could be a hero.
Think of the hundreds of thousands of plain, ordi-
nary workingmen, and of seemingly ordinary boys,
who, but for such a crisis, might have passed through
life never knowing this to be in them, and who cou-
rageously endured hunger and thirst and cold, and
separation from dearest friends, for days and weeks
and months, when they might, at any day, have
bought a respite by deserting their country's flag !
Starving boys, sick at heart, dizzy in head, pining for
home and mother, still found w^armth and comfort in
the one thought that they could suffer, die, for their
country ; and the graves at Salisbury and Anderson-
ville show in how many souls this noble power of self-'
sacrifice to the higher good was lodged, — how many
there were, even in the humblest walks of life, who
preferred death by torture to life in dishonor.

" It is this heroic element in man and woman that
makes self-sacrifice an ennobling and purifying ordeal
in any religious profession. The man really is taken
into a higher region of his own nature, and finds a
pleasure in the exercise of higher faculties which he
did not suppose himself to possess. Whatever sacri-

228

The Chimiiey-Corner,

fice is supposed to be duty, whether the supposition
be really correct or not, has in it an ennobling and
purifying power ; and thus the eras of conversion
from one form of the Christian religion to another are
often marked with a real and permanent exaltation of
the whole character. But it does not follow that cer-
tain religious beliefs and ordinances are in themselves
just, because they thus touch the great heroic master-
chord of the human soul. To wear sackcloth and
sleep on a plank may have been of use to many souls,
as symbolizing the awakening of this higher nature ;
but, still, the religion of the New Testament is plainly
one which calls to no such outward and evident sacri-
fices.

" It was John the Baptist, and not the Messiah,
who dwelt in the wilderness and wore garments of
camel's hair ; and Jesus was commented on, not for
his asceticism, but for his cheerful, social acceptance
of the average innocent wants and enjoyments of hu-
manity. ^ The Son of man came eating and drinking.'
The great, and never-ceasing, and utter self-sacrifice
of his life was not signified by any peculiarity of cos-
tume, or language, or manner ; it showed itself only
as it unconsciously welled up in all his words and
actions, in his estimates of life, in all that marked him
out as a being of a higher and holier sphere."

" Then you do not believe in influencing this sub-

Dress,

229

ject of dress by religious persons' adopting any par-
ticular laws of costume ? " said Pheasant.

" I do not see it to be possible," said I, " consider-
ing how society is made up. Thfere are such differ-
ences of taste and character, — people move in such
different spheres, are influenced by such different cir-
cumstances, — that all we can do is to lay down cer-
tain great principles, and leave it to every one to
apply them according to individual needs."

" But w^hat are these principles ? There is the
grand inquiry."

" Well," said I, " let us feel our way. In the first
place, then, we are all agreed in one starting-point, —
that beauty is not to be considered as a bad thing, —
that the love of ornament in our outward and phys-
ical life is not a sinful or a dangerous feeling, and only
leads to evil, as all other innocent things do, by being
used in wrong ways. So far we are all agreed, are we
not?"

" Certainly," said all the voices.

" It is, therefore, neither wicked nor silly nor weak-
minded to like beautiful dress, and all that goes to
make it up. Jewelry, diamonds, pearls, emeralds,
rubies, and all sorts of pretty things that are made of
them, are as lawful and innocent objects of admiration
and desire, as flowers or birds or butterflies, or the
tints of evening skies. Gems, in fact, are a species

230 The Chimney-Corner.

of mineral flower ; they are the blossoms of the dark,
hard mine ; and what they want in perfume they make
up in durability. The best Christian in the -world
may, without the least inconsistency, admire them, and
say, as a charming, benevolent old Quaker lady once
said to me, ' I do so love to look at beautiful jewelry T
The love of beautiful dress, in itself, therefore, so far
from being in a bad sense worldly, may be the same
indication of a refined and poetical nature that is
given by the love of flowers and of natural objects.

" In the third place, there is nothing in itself wrong,
or unworthy a rational being, in a certain degree of
attention to the fashion of society in our costume. It
is not wrong to be annoyed at unnecessary departures
from the commonly received practices of good society
in the matter of the arrangement of our toilet ; and it
would indicate rather an unamiable want of sympathy
with our fellow-beings, if we were not willing, for the
most part, to follow what they indicate to be agreeable
in the disposition of our outward aflairs."

" Well, I must say, Mr. Crowfield, you are allowing
us all a very generous margin," said Humming-Bird.

" But, now," said I, " I am coming to the restric-
tions. When is love of dress excessive and wrong ?
To this I answer by stating my faith in one of old
Plato's ideas, in which he speaks of beauty and its
u:ses. He says there were two impersonations of

Dress.

231

beauty worshipped under the name of Venus in the
ancient times, — the one celestial, born of the highest
gods, the other earthly. To the earthly Venus the
sacrifices were such as were more trivial ; to the celes-
tial, such as were more holy. ^ The worship of the
earthly Venus,' he says, ' sends us oftentimes on un-
worthy and trivial errands, but the worship of the
celestial to high and honorable friendships, to noble
aspirations and heroic actions.'

" Now it seems to me that, if we bear in mind this
truth in regard to beauty, we shall have a test with
which to try ourselves in the matter of physical adorn-
ment. We are always excessive when we sacrifice the
higher beauty to attain the lower one. A woman who
will sacrifice domestic affection^ conscience, self-re-
spect, honor, to love of dress, we all agree, loves dress
too much. She loses the true and higher beauty of
womanhood for the lower beauty of gems and flowers
and colors. A girl who sacrifices to dress all her time,
all her strength, all her money, to the neglect of the
cultivation of her mind and heart, and to the neglect
of the claims of others on her helpfulness, is sacrific-
ing the higher to the lower beauty. Her fault is not
the love of beauty, but loving the wrong and inferior
kind.

" It is remarkable that the directions of Holy Writ,
in regard to the female dress, should distinctly take

233: The Chimney-ComeK

note of this difference between the higher and the
lower beauty which we find in the works of Plato.
The Apostle gives no rule, no specific costume, which
should mark the Christian woman from the Pagan ;
but says, ' whose adorning, let it not be that outward
adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold,
or of putting on of apparel j but let it be the hidden
man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible,
even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which
is in the sight of God of great price.' The gold and
gems and apparel are not forbidden ; but we are told
not to depend on them for beauty, to the neglect of
those imperishable, immortal graces that belong to the
soul. The makers of fashion among whom Christian
women lived when the Apostle wrote were the same
class of briUiant and worthless Aspasias who make
the fashions of modern Paris ; and all womankind
was sunk into slavish adoration of mere physical
adornment when the Gospel sent forth among them
this call to the culture of a higher and immortal
beauty.

" In fine, girls," said I, " you may try yourselves by
this standard. You love dress too much when you
care more for your outward adornings than for your
inward dispositions, — when it afflicts you more to
have torn your dress than to have lost your temper, —
when you are more troubled by an ill-fitting gown

Dress,

233

than by a neglected duty, — when you are less con-
cerned at having made an unjust comment, or spread
a scandalous report, than at having worn a passee bon-
net,— when you are less troubled* at the thought of
being found at the last great feast without the wedding
garment, than at being found at the party to-night in
the fashion of last year. No Cfiristian woman, as I
view it, ought to give such attention to her dress as to
allow it to take up all of three very important things,
viz. : —

All her time.
All her strength.
All her money.
Whoever does this lives not the Christian, but the
Pagan life, — worships not at the Christian's altar of
our Lord Jesus, but at the shrine of the lower Venus
of Corinth and Rome."

"O now, Mr. Crowfield, you frighten me," said
Humming-Bird. " I 'm so afraid, do you know, that
I am doing exactly that."

" And so am I," said Pheasant ; " and yet, certainly,
it is not what I mean or intend to do."
But how to help it," said Dove.
" My dears," said I, " where there is a will there is
a way. Only resolve that you will put the true beauty
first, — that, even if you do have to seem unfashion-
able, you w^ill follow the highest beauty of woman-

234 Chimney-Corner.

hood, — and the battle is half gained. Only resolve
that your time, your strength, your money, such as
you have, shall not all — nor more than half — be
given to mere outward adornment, and you will go
right. It requires only an army of girls animated
with this noble purpose to declare independence in
America, and emancipate us from the decrees and
tyrannies of French actresses and ballet-dancers. En
avanty girls ! You yet can, if you will, save the repub-
lic."

X.

WHAT ARE THE SOURCES OF BEAUTY

'HE conversation on dress which I had held with

■JL Jennie and her little covey of Birds of Paradise
appeared to have worked in the minds of the fair
council, for it was not long before they invaded my
study again in a body. They were going out to a
party, but called for Jennie, and of course gave me
and Mrs. Crowfield the privilege of seeing them
equipped for conquest.

Latterly, I must confess, the mysteries of the toilet
rites have impressed me with a kind of superstitious
awe. Only a year ago my daughter Jennie had
smooth dark hair, which she wreathed in various soft,
flowing lines about her face, and confined in a clas-
sical knot on the back of her head. Jennie had rather
a talent for coiffure^ and the arrangement of her hair
was one of my little artistic delights. She always had
something there, — a leaf, a spray, a bud or blossom,
that looked fresh, and had a sort of poetical grace of
its own.

IN DRESS.

236 The Chimney-Comer,

But in a gradual way all this has been changing.
Jennie's him first became slightly wavy, then curly,
finally frizzly, presenting a tumbled and twisted ap-
pearance, which gave me great inward concern ; but
when I spoke upon the "subject I was always laughing-
ly silenced with the definitive settling remark : " O,
it 's the fashion, papa ! Everybody wears it so."

I particularly objected to the change on my own
small account, because the smooth, breakfast-table
coiffure^ which I had always so much enjoyed, was
now often exchanged for a peculiarly bristling appear-
ance ; the hair being variously twisted, tortured,
woven, and wound, without the least view to immedi-
ate beauty or grace. But all this, I was informed,
was the necessary means towards crimping for some
evening display of a more elaborate nature than
usual.

Mrs. Crowfield and myself are not party-goers by
profession, but Jennie insists on our going out at
least once or twice in a season, just, as she says, to
keep up with the progress of society; and at these
times I have been struck with frequent surprise by the
general untidiness which appeared to have come over
the heads of all my female friends. I know, of
course, that I am only a poor, ignorant, bewildered
man-creature ; but to my uninitiated eyes they looked
as if they had all, after a very restless and perturbed

Sources of BeatUy in Dress, 237

sleep, come out of bed without smoothing their tum-
bled and disordered locks. • Then, every young lady,
without exception, seemed to have one kind of hair,
and that the kind which was rather suggestive of the
term woolly. Every sort of wild abandon of frowzy
locks seemed to be in vogue \ in softie cases the hair
appearing to my vision nothing but a confused snarl,
in which glittered tinklers, spangles, and bits of tin-
sel, and from which waved long pennants and stream-
ers of different-colored ribbons.

I was in fact very greatly embarrassed by my first
meeting with some very charming girls, whom I
thought I knew as familiarly as my own daughter
Jennie, and whose soft, pretty hair had often formed
the object of my admiration. Now, however, they
revealed themselves to me in coiffures which forcibly
reminded me of the electrical experiments which used
to entertain us in college, when the subject stood on
the insulated stool, and each particular hair of his
head bristled and rose, and set up, as it w^re, on its
own account. This high-flying condition of the tress-
es, and the singularity of the ornaments which ap-
peared to be thrown at hap-hazard into them, suggest-
ed so oddly the idea of a bewitched person, that I
could scarcely converse with any presence of mind,
or reahze that these really were the nice, well-in-
formed, sensible little girls of my own neighborhood,

238

The Chimney-Corner,

— the good daughters, good sisters, Sunday-school
teachers, and other familiar members of our best edu-
cated circles ; and I came away from the party in a
sort of blue maze, and hardly in a state to conduct
myself with credit in the examination through which
I knew Jennie would put me as to the appearance of
her different friends.

I know not how it is, but the glamour of fashion in
the eyes of girlhood is so complete, that the oddest,
wildest, most uncouth devices find grace and favor in
the eyes of even well-bred girls, when once that invisi-
ble, ineffable aura has breathed over them which de-
clares them to be fashionable. They may defy them
for a time, — they may pronounce them horrid j but
it is with a secretly melting heart, and with a -mental
reservation to look as nearly like the abhorred specta-
cle as they possibly can on the first favorable opportu-
nity.

On the occasion of the visit referred to, Jennie
ushered her three friends in triumph into my study ;
and, in truth, the little room seemed to be perfectly
transformed by their brightness. My honest, nice,
lovable little Yankee-fireside girls were, to be sure,
got up in a style that would have done credit to
Madame Pompadour, or any of the most questionable
characters of the time of Louis XIV. or XV. They
were frizzled and powdered, and built up in elaborate

Sources of Beauty in Dress. 239

devices; they wore on their hair flowers, gems,
streamers, tinklers, humming-birds, butterflies, South
American beetles, beads, bugles, and all imaginable
rattle-traps, which jingled and clinked with every
motion ; and yet, as they were three or four fresh,
handsome, intelligent, bright-eyed prls, there was no
denying the fact that they did look extremely pretty ;
and as they sailed hither and thither before me, and
gazed down upon me in the saucy might of their rosy
girlhood, there was a gay defiance in Jennie's demand,
" Now, papa, how do you like us ? "

" Very charming," answered I, surrendering at dis-
cretion.

" I told you,, girls, that you could convert him to
the fashions, if he should once see you in party trim."

" I beg pardon, my dear ; I am not converted to
the fashion, but to you, and that is a point on which
I did n't need conversion ; but the present fashions,
even so fairly represented as I see them, I humbly
confess I dislike."

" O Mr. Crowfield ! "

" Yes, my dears, I do. But then, I protest, I 'm
not fairly treated. I think, for a young American
girl, who looks as most of my fair friends do look, to
come down with her bright eyes and all her little pan-
oply of graces upon an old fellow like me, and expect
him to like a fashion merely because she looks well

240 The Chimney-Corner,

in it, is all sheer nonsense. Why, girls, if you wore
rings in your noses, and bangles on your arms up to
your elbows, if you tied your hair in a war-knot on
the top of your heads like the Sioux Indians, you
would look pretty still.' The question is n't, as I view
it, whether you look pretty, — for that you do, and
that you will, do what you please and dress how you
will. The question is whether you might not look
prettier, whether another style of dress, and another
mode of getting up, would not be far more becoming.
I am one who thinks that it would."

" Now, Mr. Crowfield, you positively are too bad,"
said Humming-Bird, whose delicate head was encir-
cled by a sort of crapy cloud of bright hair, sparkling
with gold-dust and spangles, in the midst of which,
just over her forehead, a gorgeous blue butterfly was
perched, while a confused mixture of hairs, gold-pow-
der, spangles, stars, and tinkling ornaments fell in a
sort of cataract down her pretty neck. " You see, we
girls think everything of you ; and now we don't like
it that you don't like our fashions."

"Why, my little princess, so long as I like you
better than your fashions, and merely think they
are not worthy of you, what 's the harm 1 "

" O yes, to be sure. You sweeten the dose to us
babies witli that sugar-plum. But really, Mr. Crow-
field, why don't you like the fashions ? "

Sources of Beauty in Dress. 241

" Because, to my view, tliey are in great part in
false taste, and injure the beauty of the girls," said I.
" They are inappropriate to their characters, and
make them look like a kind and class of women
whom they do not, and I trust never will, resemble
internally, and whose mark therefore they ought not
to bear externally. But there you are, beguiling me
into a sermon which you will only hate me in your ,
hearts for preaching. Go along, children ! You cer-
tainly look as well as anybody can in that style of
getting up ; so go to your party, and to-morrow night,
when you are tired and sleepy, if you '11 come with
your crochet, and sit in my study, I will read you
Christopher Crowfield's dissertation on dress."

^^That will be amusing, to say the least," said
Humming-Bird j " and, be sure, we will all be here.
And mind, you have to show good reasons for dislik-
ing the present fashion."

So the next evening there was a worsted party in
my study, sitting in the midst of which I read as
follows :

"what are the sources of beauty in dress.

" The first one is appropriateness. Colors and
forms and modes, in themselves graceful or beautiful,
cau become ungraceful and ridiculous simply through
inappropriateness. The most lovely bonnet that the
II p

242 The CJiimney-Cojnicr.

most approved modiste can invent, if worn on the
head of a coarse-faced Irishwoman bearing a market-
basket on her arm, excites no emotion but that of the
ludicrous. The most elegant and brilliant evening
dress, if worn in the d'aytime in a railroad car, strikes
every one with a sense of absurdity ; whereas both
these objects in appropriate associations would excite
only the idea of beauty. So, a mode of dress obvi-
ously intended for driving strikes us as outre in a par-
lor ; and a parlor dress would no less shock our eyes
on horseback. In short, the course of this principle
through all varieties of form can easily be perceived.
Besides appropriateness to time, place, and circum-
stances, there is appropriateness to age, position, and
character. This is the foundation of all our ideas of
professional propriety in costume. One would not
like to see a clergyman in his external air and appoint-
ments resembling a gentleman of the turf; one would
not wish a refined and modest scholar to wear the
outward air of a fast fellow, or an aged and venerable
statesman to appear with all the peculiarities of a
young dandy. The flowers, feathers, and furbelows
which a light-hearted young girl of seventeen embel-
lishes by the airy grace with which she wears them,
are simply ridiculous when transferred to the toilet
of her serious, well-meaning mamma, who bears them
about with an anxious face, merely because a loqua-

Sources of Beauty in Dress, 243

cious milliner has assured her, with many protesta-
tions, that it is the fashion, and the only thing remain-
ing for her to do.

" There are, again, modes of dress in themselves
very beautiful and very striking, which are peculiarly
adapted to theatrical representation and to pictures,
but the adoption of which as a part of unprofessional
toilet produces a sense of incongruity. A mode of
dress may be in perfect taste on the stage, that would
be absurd in an evening party, absurd in the street,
absurd, in short, everywhere else.

Now you come to my first objectioia to our pres-
ent American toilet, — its being to a very great extent
inappropi'iaie to our climate, to our habits of life and
thought, and to the whole structure of ideas on which
our life is built. What we want, apparently, is some
court of inquiry and adaptation that shall pass judg-
ment on the fashions of other countries, and modify
them to make them a graceful expression of our own
national character, and modes of thinking and living.
A certain class of women in Paris at this present hour
makes the fashions that rule the feminine world.
They are women who live only for the senses, with as
utter and obvious disregard of any moral or intellect-
ual purpose to be answered in living as a paroquet or
a macaw. They have no family ties ; love, in its pure
domestic sense, is an impossibility in their lot; re-

244

*

The Chimney-Corner,

ligion in any sense is another impossibility \ and their
whole intensity of existence, therefore, is concentrated
on the question of sensuous enjoyment, and that
personal adornment which is necessary to secure it.
When the great, ruling' country in the world of taste
and fashion has fallen into such a state that the vir-
tual leaders of fashion are women of this character, it
is not to be supposed that the fashions emanating from
them will be of a kind well adapted to express the
ideas, the thoughts, the state of society, of a great
Christian democracy such as ours ought to be.

" What is galled, for example, the Pompadour style
of dress, so much in vogue of late, we can see to be
perfectly adapted to the kind of existence led by dissi-
pated women, whose life is one revel of excitement ;
and who, never proposing to themselves any intellect-
ual employment or any domestic duty, can afford to
spend three or four hours every day under the hands
of a waiting-maid, in alternately tangling and untang-
ling their hair. Powder, paint, gold-dust and silver-
dust, pomatums, cosmetics, are all perfectly appro-
priate where the ideal of life is to keep up a false
show of beauty after the true bloom is wasted by
dissipation. The woman who never goes to bed till
morning, who never even dresses herself, who never
takes a needle in her hand, who never goes to church,
and never entertains one serious idea pf duty of any

Sources of Beauty in Dress, 245

kind, when got up in Pompadour style, has, to say
the truth, the good taste and merit of appropriateness.
Her dress expresses just what she is, — all false, all
artificial, all meretricious and unnatural ; no part or
portion of her from which it might be inferred what
her Creator originally designed her to be.

"But when a nice little American girl, who has
been brought up to cultivate her mind, to refine her
taste, to care for her health, to be a helpful daughter
and a good sister, to visit the poor and teach in Sun-
day schools ; when a good, sweet, modest little puss
of this kind combs all her pretty hair backward till it
is one mass of frowzy confusion ; when she powders,
and paints uilcjer her eyes ; when she adopts, with
eager enthusiasm, every outre^ unnatural fashion that
comes from the most dissipated foreign circles, — she
is in bad taste, because she does not represent either
her character, her education, or her good points.
She looks like a second-rate actress, when she is, in
fact, a most thoroughly respectable, estimable, lovable
little girl, and on the way, as we poor fellows fondly
hope, to bless some one of us with her tenderness and
care in some nice home in the future.

*^ It is not the fashion in America for young girls to
have waiting-maids, — in foreign countries it is the
fashion. All this meretricious toilet — so elaborate,
so complicated, and so contrary to nature ^ — must be

246

The Chimney-Corner,

accomplished, and is accomplished, by the busy little
fingers of each girl for herself; and so it seems to be
very evident that a style of hair-dressing which it will
require hours to disentangle, which must injure and
in time ruin the natural beauty of the hair, ought to
be one thing which a well-regulated court of inquiry
would reject in our American fashions.

" Again, the genius of American life is for simpli-
city and absence of ostentation. We have no parade
of office ; our public men wear no robes, no stars,
garters, collars, &c. \ and it would, therefore, be in
good taste in our women to cultivate simple styles of
dress. Now I object to the present fashions, as
adopted from France, that they are flashy and theatri-
cal. Having their origin with a community whose
senses are blunted, drugged, and deadened with dis-
sipation and ostentation, they reject the simpler forms
of beauty, and seek for startHng effects, for odd and
unexpected results. The contemplation of one of
our fashionable churches, at the hour when its fair
occupants pour forth, gives one a great deal of sur-
prise. The toilet there displayed might have been
in good keeping among showy Parisian women in an
opera-house ; but even their original inventors would
have been shocked at the idea of carrying them into
a church. The rawness of our American mind as to
the subject of propriety in dress is nowhere more

Sources of Bcatcty in Dress, * 247

shown than in the fact that no apparent distinction is
made between church and opera-house in the adapta-
tion of attire. Very estimable, and, we trust, very
rehgious young women sometimes enter the house of
God in a costume which makes their utterance of the
words of the Htany and the acts of prostrate devotion
in the service seem almost burlesque. When a brisk
little creature comes into a pew with hair frizzed till
it stands on end in a most startling manner, rattling
strings of beads and bits of tinsel, mounting over all
some pert little hat with a red or green feather stand-
ing saucily upright in front, she may look exceedingly
pretty and piquanie ; and, if she came there for a
game of croquet or a tableau-party, would be all in
very good taste ; but as she comes to confess that
she is a miserable sinner, that she has done the things
she ought not to have done and left undone the things
she ought to have done, — as she takes upon her lips
most solemn and tremendous words, whose meaning
runs far beyond life into a sublime eternity, — there
is a discrepancy which would be ludicrous if it were
not melancholy.

" One is apt to think, at first view, that St. Jerome
was right in saying,

* She who comes in glittering veil
To mourn her frailty, still is frail.'

But St. Jerome was in the wrong, after all ; for a

248 : The Chi7nney-Corner,

flashy, unsuitable attire in church is not always a
mark of an undevout or entirely worldly mind ; it is
simply a mark of a raw, uncultivated taste. In Italy,
the ecclesiastical law prescribing a uniform black
dress for the churches 'gives a sort of education to
European ideas of propriety in toilet, which prevents
churches from being made theatres for the same kind
of display which is held to be in good taste at places
of public amusement. It is but justice to the invent-
ors of Parisian fashions to say, that, had they ever
had the smallest idea of going to church and Sunday
school, as our good girls do, they would immediately
have devised toilets appropriate to such exigencies.
If it were any part of their plan of life to appear
statedly in public to confess themselves ^miserable
sinners,' we should doubtless have sent over here the
design of some graceful penitential habit, which would
give our places of worship a much more appropriate
air than they now have. As it is, it would form a
subject for such a court of inquiry and adaptation as
we have supposed, to draw a line between the cos-
tume of the theatre and the church.

" In the same manner, there is a want of appro-
priateness in the costume of our American women,
who display in the street promenade a style of dress
and adornment originally intended for showy carriage
drives in such great exhibition grounds as the Bois de

Sources of Beattty in Dress. 249

Boulogne. The makers of Parisian fashions are not
generally wallcers. They do not, with all their ex-
travagance, have the bad taste to trail yards of silk
and velvet over the mud and dirt of a pavement,
or promenade the street in a costume so pronounced
and striking as to draw the involuntary glance of
every eye ; and the showy toilets displayed on the
pave by American young women have more than once
exposed them to misconstruction in the eyes of for-
eign observers.

Next to appropriateness, the second requisite to
beauty in dress I take to be unity of effect. In
speaking of the arrangement of rooms in the ^ House
and Home Papers,' I criticised some apartments
wherein were many showy articles of furniture, and
much expense had been incurred, because, with all
this, there was no unity of resitlt. The carpet was
costly, and in itself handsome ; the paper was also in
itself handsome and -costly ; the tables and chairs
also in themselves very elegant \ and yet, owing to
a want of any unity of idea, any grand harmonizing
tint of color, or method of arrangement, the rooms
had a jumbled, confused air, and nothing about them
seemed particularly pretty or effective. I instanced
rooms where thousands of dollars had been spent,
which, because of this defect, never excited admira-
tion ; and oth^s in which the furniture was of the

250 Tlie Chimney-Corner.

cheapest description, but which always gave imme-
diate and universal pleasure. The same rule holds
good in dress. As in every apartment, so in every
tojlet, there should be one ground tone or dominant
color, which should rule all the others, and there
should be a general style of idea to which everything
should be subjected.

"We may illustrate the effect of this principle in a
very familiar case. It is generally conceded that the
majority of women look better in mourning than they
do in their ordinary apparel ; a comparatively plain
person looks almost handsome in simple black. Now
why is this? Simply because mourning requires a
severe uniformity of color and idea, and forbids the
display of that variety of colors and objects which go
to make up the ordinary female costume, and which
very few v/omen have such skill in using as to pro-
duce really beautiful effects.

"Very similar results have been attained by the
Quaker costume, which, in spite of the quaint severity
of the forms to which it adhered, has always had a
remarkable degree of becomingness, because of its
restriction to a few simple colors and to the absence
of distracting ornament.

" But the same effect which is produced in mourn-
ing or the Quaker costume may be preserved in a
style of dress admitting color and ornamentation. A

Sources of Beauty in Dress, 251

dress may have the richest fulness of color, and still
the tints may be so chastened and subdued as to
produce the impression of a severe simplicity. Sup-
pose, for example, a golden-haired- blonde chooses for
the ground-tone of her toilet a deep shade of purple,
such as affords a good background for the hair and
complexion. The larger draperies of the costume
being of this color, the bonnet may be of a lighter
shade of the same, ornamented with lilac hyacinths,
shading insensibly towards rose- color. The effect of
such a costume is simple, even though there be much
ornament, because it is ornament artistically disposed
towards a general result.

" A dark shade of green being chosen as the
ground-tone of a dress, the whole costume may, in
like manner, be worked up through lighter and bright-
er shades of green, in which rose-colored flowers may
appear with the same impression of simple appro-
priateness that is made by the pink blossom over the
green leaves of a rose. There have been times in
France when the study of color produced artistic
effects in costume worthy of attention, and resulted
in styles of dress of real beauty. But the present
corrupted state of morals there has introduced a cor-
rupt taste in dress ; and it is worthy of thought that
the decline of moral purity in society is often marked
by the deterioration of the sense of artistic beauty.

252 The Chhnney-Corner.

Corrupt and dissipated social epochs produce corrupt
styles of architecture and corrupt styles of drawing
and painting, as might easily be illustrated by the
history of art. When the leaders of society have
blunted their finer perceptions by dissipation and
immorality, they are incapable of feeling the beauties
which come from delicate concords and truly artistic
combinations. They verge towards barbarism, and
require things that are strange, odd, dazzling, and
peculiar to captivate their jaded senses. Such we
take to be the condition of Parisian society now.
The tone of it is given by women who are essentially
impudent and vulgar, who override and overrule, by
the- mere brute force of opulence and luxury, women
of finer natures and moral tone. The court of France
is a court of adventurers, of parvenus ; and the pal-
aces, the toilets, the equipage, the entertainments, of
the mistresses outshine those of the lawful wives.
Hence comes a style of dress which is in itself vulgar,
ostentatious, pretentious, without simplicity, without
unity, seeking to dazzle by strange combinations and
daring contrasts.

" Now, when the fashions emanating from such a
state of society come to our country, where it has
been too much the habit to put on and wear, without
dispute and without inquiry, any or everything that
France sends, the results produced are often things to

Sources of Beauty in Dress,

253

make one wonder. A respectable man, sitting quietly
in church or other pubHc assembly, may be pardoned
sometimes for indulging a silent sense of the ridic-
ulous in the contemplation of the forest of .bonnets
which surround him, as he humbly asks himself the
question, Were these meant to cover the head, to de-
fend it, or to ornament it? and if they are intended
for any of these purposes, how ?

" I confess, to me nothing is so surprising as the
sort of things which well-bred women serenely wear
on their heads with the idea that they are ornaments.
On my right hand sits a good-looking girl with a thing
on her head which seems to consist mostly of bunches
of grass, straws, with a confusion of lace, in w^hich sits
a draggled bird, looking as if the cat had had him
before the lady. In front of her sits another, who has
a glittering confusion of beads swinging hither and
thither from a jaunty little structure of black and red
velvet. An anxious-looking matron appears under
the high eaves of a bonnet with a gigantic crimson
rose crushed down into a mass of tangled hair. She
is ornamented / she has no doubt about it.

" The fact is, that a style of dress which allows the
use of everything in heaven above or earth beneath
requires more taste and skill in disposition than falls
to the lot of most of the female sex to make it even
tolerable. In consequence, the flowers, fruits, grass,

254

The Chimney 'Corner,

hay, straw, oats, butterflies, beads, birds, tinsel,
streamers, jinglers, lace, bugles, crape, which seem to
be appointed to form a covering for the female head,
very often appear in combinations so singular, and the
results, taken in conn'ection with all the rest of the
costume, are such, that we really think the people
who usually assemble in a Quaker meeting-house are,
with their entire absence of ornament, more becom-
ingly attired than the majority of our public audiences.
For if one considers his own impression after having
seen an assemblage of women dressed in Quaker cos-
tume, he will find it to be, not of a confusion of twink-
ling finery, but of many fair, sweet faces ^ of charming,
nice-looking women^ and not of articles of dress.
Now this shows that the severe dress, after all, has
better answered the true purpose of dress, in setting
forth the woman^ than our modern costume, where
the woman is but one item in a flying mass of colors
and forms, all of which distract attention from the
faces they are supposed to adorn. The dress of the
Philadelphian ladies has always been celebrated for
its elegance of effect, from the fact, probably, that
the early Quaker parentage of the city formed the
eye and the taste of its women for uniform and simple
styles of color, and for purity and chastity of lines.
The most perfect toilets that have ever been achieved
in America have probably been those of the class

Sources of Beauty in Dress, 255

familiarly called the gay Quakers, — children of Qua-
ker families, who, while abandoning the strict rules
of the sect, yet retain their modest and severe reti-
cence, relying on richness of material, and soft, har-
monious coloring, rather than striking and dazzling
ornament.

" The next source of beauty in dress is the impres-
sion of truthfulness and reality. It is a well-known
principle of the fine arts, in all their branches, that
all shams and mere pretences are to be rejected, — a
truth which Ruskin has shown with the full lustre of
his many-colored prose-poetry. As stucco pretending
to be marble, and graining pretending to be wood,
are in false taste in building, so false jewelry and
cheap fineries of every kind are in bad taste ; so also
is powder instead of natural complexion, false hair
instead of real, and flesh-painting of every description.
I have even the hardihood to think and assert, in the
presence of a generation whereof not one woman in
twenty wears her own hair, that the simple, short-
cropped locks of Rosa Bonheur are in a more beauti-
ful style of hair-dressing than the most elaborate edi-
fice of curls, rats, and waterfalls that is ■ erected on
any fair head now-a-days."

" O Mr. Crowfield ! you hit us all now," cried sev-
eral voices.

" I know it, girls, — I know it. I admit that you

256

The Chininey-Corner,

are all looking very pretty; but I do maintain that
you are none of you doing yourselves justice, and that
Nature, if you would only follow her, would do better
for you than all these elaborations. A short crop of
your own hair, that you could brush out in ten min-
utes every morning, would have a more real, healthy
beauty than the elaborate structures which cost you
hours of time, and give you the headache besides.
I speak of the short crop, — to put the case at the
very lowest figure, — for many of you have lovely
hair of different lengths, and susceptible of a variety
of arrangements, if you did not suppose yourself
obliged to build after a foreign pattern, instead of
following out the intentions of the great Artist who
made you.

" Is it necessary absolutely that every woman and
girl should look exactly like every other one ? There
are women whom Nature makes with wavy or curly
hair : let them follow her. There are those whom
she makes with soft and smooth locks, and with whom
crinkling and craping is only a sham. They look
very pretty with it, to be sure ; but, after all, is there
but one style of beauty? and might they not look
prettier in cultivating the style which Nature seemed
to have intended for them ?

" As to the floods of false jewelry, glass beads, and
tinsel finery which seem to be sweeping over the toilet

Sources of Beatify in Dress, 257.

of our women, I must protest that they are vulgariz-
ing the taste, and having a seriously bad effect on the
delicacy of artistic perception. It is almost impossi-
ble to manage such material and give any kind of
idea of neatness or purity ; for the least wear takes
away their newness. And of all disreputable things,
tumbled, rumpled, and tousled finery is the most dis-
reputable. A simple white muslin, that can come
fresh from the laundry every week, is, in point of
real taste, worth any amount of spangled tissues. A
plain straw bonnet, with only a ribbon across it, is in
reality in better taste than rubbishy birds or butterflies,
or tinsel ornaments.

" Finally, girls, don't dress at haphazard ; for dress,
so far from being a matter of small consequence, is in
reality one of the fine arts, — so far from trivial, that
each country ought to have a style of its own, and
each individual such a liberty of modification of the
general fashion as suits and befits her person, her age,
her position in life, and the kind of character she
wishes to maintain.

"The only motive in toilet which seems to have
obtained much as yet among young girls is the very
vague impulse to look ^ stylish,' — a desire which must
answer for more vulgar dressing than one would wish
to see. If girls would rise above this, and desire to
express by their dress the attributes of true ladyhood,

Q

258

The Chhnney-Corner,

nicety of eye, fastidious neatness, purity of taste,
truthfulness, and sincerity of nature, they might form,
each one for herself, a style having its own individual
beauty, incapable of ever becoming common and
vulgar.

" A truly trained taste and eye would enable a lady
to select from the permitted forms of fashion such as
might be modified to her purposes, always remember-
ing that simplicity is safe, that to attempt little, and
succeed, is better than to attempt a great deal, and
fail.

"And now, girls, I will finish by reciting to you the
lines old Ben Jonson addressed to the pretty girls
of his time, which form an appropriate ending to my
remarks.

* Still to be dressed
As you were going to a feast ;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed ;
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art's hid causes are not found, ■
All is not sweet, all is not sound.

* Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace, —
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free :
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than all the adulteries of art,
That strike my eyes, but not my heart.' "

XL

THE CATHEDRAL.

" T AM going to build a cathedral one of these
-L days," said I to my wife, as I sat looking at the
slant line of light made by the afternoon sun on our
picture of the (Cathedral of Milan.

" That picture is one of the most poetic things you
have among your house ornaments/' said Rudolph.
" Its original is the world's chief beauty, — a tribute to
religion such as Art qever gave before and never can
again, — as much before the Pantheon, as the Alps,
with their virgin snows and glittering pinnacles, are
above all temples made with hands. Say what you
will, those Middle Ages that you call Dark had a
glory of faith that never will be seen in our days of
cotton-mills and Manchester prints. Where will you
marshal such an army of saints as stands in yonder
white-marble forest, visibly transfigured and glorified
in that celestial Italian air? Saintship belonged to
the mediaeval Church; the heroism of religion has
died with it."

26o

The Chhnney-Corner,

" That 's just like one of your assertions, Rudolph,"
said I. "You might as well say that Nature has
never made any flowers since Linnaeus shut up his
herbarium. We have no statues and pictures of
modern saints, but saints themselves, thank God,
have never been wanting. ^ As it was in the begin-
ning, is now, and ever shall be — ' "

" But what about your cathedral ? " said my wife.

" O yes ! — my cathedral, yes. When my stocks in
cloud-land rise, I '11 build a cathedral larger than
Milan's j and the men, but more particularly the wom-
en^ thereon, shall be those who have done even more
than St. Paul tells of in the saints of old, who * sub-
dued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, quenched the
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of
weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight,
turned to flight the armies of the aliens.' I am not
now thinking of Florence Nightingale, nor of the host
of women who have been walking worthily in her
footsteps, but of nameless saints of more retired and
private state, — domestic saints, who have tended
children not their own through whooping-cough and
measles, and borne the unruly whims of fretful inva-
lids, — stocking-darning, shirt-making saints, — saints
who wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound
themselves with no belts of spikes and nails, yet in
their inmost souls were marked and seared with the

The CathedraL

261

red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice, — saints for
whom the mystical self-annihilation and self-

crucifixion had a real and tangible meaning, all the
stronger because their daily death was marked by no
outward sign. No mystical rites consecrated them ;
no organ-music burst forth in solemn rapture to wel-
come them ; no habit of their order proclaimed to
themselves and the world that they were the elect of
Christ, the brides of another life : but small eating
cares, daily prosaic duties, the petty friction of all
the littleness and all the inglorious annoyances of
every day, were as dust that hid the beauty and gran-
deur of their calling even from themselves; they
walked unknown even to their households, unknown
even to their own souls ; but when the Lord comes to
build his New Jerusalem, we shall find many a white
stone with a new name thereon, and the record of
deeds and words which only He that seeth in secret
knows. Many a humble soul will be amazed to find
that the seed it sowed in such weakness, in the dust
of daily life, has blossomed into immortal flowers
under the eye of the Lord.

" When I build my cathedral, that woman," I said,
pointing to a small painting by the fire, " shall be
among the first of my saints. You see her there, in
an every-day dress-cap with a mortal thread-lace
border, and with a very ordinary worked collar, fast-

262

The Chimney-Corner.

ened by a visible and terrestrial breastpin. There is
no nimbus around her head, no sign of the cross
upon her breast ; her hands are clasped on no cruci-
fix or rosary. Her clear, keen, hazel eye looks as if
it could sparkle witli mirthfulness, as in fact it
could ; there are in it both the subtile flash of wit and
the subdued light of humor ; and though the whole
face smiles, it has yet a certain decisive firmness that
speaks the soul immutable in good. That woman
shall be the first saint in my cathedral, and her name
shall be recorded as Saint Esther. What makes saint-
liness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary
goodness, is a certain quahty of magnanimity and
greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of
the heroic. To be really great in little things, to be
truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of every-
day life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canoni-
zation, — and this virtue was hers. New England
Puritanism must be credited with the making of many
such wom^n. Severe as was her discipline, and harsh
as seems now her rule, we have 3^et to see whether
women will be born of modern systems of tolerance
and indulgence equal to those grand ones of the olden
times whose places now know them no more. The
inconceivable austerity and solemnity with which Pu-
ritanism invested this mortal life, the awful grandeur
of the themes which it made household words, the

The Cathedral,

263

sublimity of the issues which it hung upon the com-
monest acts of our earthly existence, created charac-
ters of more than Roman strength and greatness ; and
the good men and women of Puritan training excelled
the saints of the Middle Ages, as a soul fully devel-
oped intellectually, educated to closest thought, and
exercised in reasoning, is superior to a soul great
merely through impulse and sentiment

" My earliest recollections of Aunt Esther, for so
our saint was known, were of a bright-faced, cheerful,
witty, quick-moving little middle-aged person, who
came into our house like a good fairy whenever there
was a call of sickness or trouble. If an accident
happened in the great roistering family of eight or
ten children, (and when was not something happening
to some of us ? ) and we were shut up in a sick-room,
then duly as daylight came the quick step and cheer-
ful face of Aunt Esther, — not solemn and lugubrious
like so many sick-room nurses, but with a never-fail-
ing flow of wit and story that could beguile even the
most doleful into laughing at their own afflictions. I
remember how a fit of the quinsy — most tedious of
all sicknesses to an active child — was gilded and
glorified into quite a fete by my having Aunt Esther
all to myself for two whole days, with nothing to do
but amuse me. She charmed me into smiling at the
very pangs which had made me weep before, and of

264

The Chimney-Corner,

which she described her own experiences in a manner
to make me think that, after all, the quinsy was some-
thing with an amusing side to it. Her knowledge of
all sorts of medicines, gargles, and alleviatives, her
perfect familiarity with every canon and law of good
nursing and tending, was something that could only
have come from long experience in those good old
New England days when there were no nurses recog-
nized as a class in the land, but when watching and
the care of the sick were among those offices of
Christian life which the families of a neighborhood
reciprocally rendered each other. Even from early
youth she had obeyed a special vocation as sister of
charity in many a sick-room, and, with the usual keen
intelligence of New England, had widened her powers
of doing good by the reading of medical and physio-
logical works. Her legends of nursing in those days
of long typhus-fever and other formidable and pro-
tracted forms of disease were to our ears quite won-
derful, and we regarded her as a sort of patron saint
of the sick-room. She seemed always so cheerful, so
bright, and so devoted, that it never occurred to us
youngsters to doubt that she enjoyed, above all things,
being with us, waiting on us all day, watching over us
by night, telling us stories, and answering, in her
lively and always amusing and instructive way, that
incessant fire of questions with, which a child perse-
cutes a grown person.

The CaiJiMraL

265

" Sometimes, as a reward of goodness, we were
allowed to visit her in her own room, a neat little
parlor in the neighborhood, whose windows looked
down a hillside on one hand, under the boughs of an
apple orchard, where daisies and clover and bobolinks
always abounded in summer time, and, on the other,
faced the street, with a green yard flanked by one or
two shady elms between them and the street. No
nun's cell was ever neater, no bee's cell ever more
compactly and carefully arranged ; and to us, familiar
with the confusion of a great family of little ones,
there was something always inviting about its stillness,
its perfect order, and the air of thoughtful repose that
breathed over it. She lived there in perfect inde-
pendence, doing, as it was her delight to do, every
office of life for herself. She was her own cook, her
own parlor and chamber maid, her own laundress;
and very faultless the cooking, washing, ironing, and
care of her premises w^ere. A slice of Aunt Esther's
gingerbread, one of Aunt Esther's cookies, had, we all
believed, certain magical properties such as belonged
to no other mortal mixture. Even a handful of wal-
nuts that were brought from the depths of her mys-
terious closet had virtues in our eyes such as no other
walnitts could approach. The little shelf of books
that hung suspended by cords against her wall was
sacred in our regard ; the volumes were like no other

266

The Chimney-Corner,

books ; and we supposed that she derived from them
those stores of knowledge on all subjects which she
unconsciously dispensed among us, — for she was
always telling us something of metals, or minerals, or
gems, or plants, or animals, which awakened our curi-
osity, stimulated our inquiries, and, above all, led us to
wonder where she had learned it all. Even the slight
restrictions which her neat habits imposed on our
breezy and turbulent natures seemed all quite graceful
and becoming. It was right, in our eye*s, to cleanse
our shoes on scraper and mat with extra diligence, and
then to place a couple of chips under the heels of our
boots when we essayed to dry our feet at her spotless
hearth. We marvelled to see our own faces reflected
in a thousand smiles and winks from her bright brass
andirons, — such andirons we thought were seen on
earth in no other place, — and a pair of radiant brass
candlesticks, that illustrated the mantel-piece, were
viewed with no less respect.

" Aunt Esther's cat was a model for all cats, — so
sleek, so* intelligent, so decorous and well-trained,
always occupying exactly her own cushion by the fire,
and never transgressing in one iota the proprieties
belonging to a cat of good breeding. She shared our
affections with her mistress, and we were allowed as a
great favor and privilege, now and then, to hold the
favorite on our knees, and stroke her satin coat to a
smoother gloss.

The CathedraL

267

" But it was not for cats alone that she had attrac-
tions. She was in ^sympathy and fellowship with
everything that moved and lived ; knew every bird
and beast with a friendly acquaintanceship. The
squirrels that inhabited the trees in the front-yard
were won in time by her blandishments to come and
perch on her window-sills, and thence, by trains of
nuts adroitly laid, to disport themselves on the shining
cherry tea-table that stood between the windows ; and
we youngsters used to sit entranced with delight as
they gambolled and waved their feathery tails in frolic-
some security, eating rations of gingerbread and bits
of seed-cake with as good a relish as any child among
us.

" The habits, the rights, the wrongs, the wants, and
the sufferings of the animal creation formed the sub-
ject of many an interesting conversation with her ;
and we boys, with the natural male instinct of hunting,
trapping, and pursuing, were often made to pause in
our career, remembering her pleas for the dumb things
which could not speak for themselves.

" Her little hermitage was the favorite resort of
numerous friends. Many of the young girls who
attended the village academy made her acquaintance,
and nothing delighted her more than that they should
come there and read to her the books they were
studying, when her superior and wide information

268

The Chimney-Comer,

enabled her to light up and explain much that was not
clear to the immature students.'

In her shady retirement, too, she was a sort of
Egeria to certain men of genius, who ^ame to read
to her their writings, to consult her in their arguments,
and to discuss with her the literature and politics of
the day, — through all which her mind moved with
an equal step, yet with a sprightliness and vivacity
peculiarly feminine.

" IJer memory was rerharkably retentive, not only
of the contents. of books, but of all that great outly-
ing fund of anecdote and story which the quaint and
earnest New England life always supplied. There
were pictures of peculiar characters, legends of true
events stranger than romance, all stored in the cab-
inets of her mind ; and these came from her lips with
the greater force because the precision of her memory
enabled her to authenticate them with name, date,
and circumstances of vivid reality. From that shad-
owy line of incidents which marks the twilight boun-
dary between the spiritual world and the present life
she drew legends of peculiar clearness, but invested
with the mysterious charm which always dwells in that
uncertain region ; and the shrewd flash of her eye,
and the keen, bright smile with which she answered
the wondering question, 'What do you suppose it
was ? * or, ' What could it have been ? ' showed how

The Cathedral.

269

evenly rationalism in her mind kept pace with ro-
mance.

" The retired room in which she thus read, studied,
thought, and surveyed from afar the whole world of
science and literature, and in which she received
friends and entertained children, was perhaps the
dearest and freshest spot to her in the world. There
came a time, however, when the neat little indepen-
dent establishment was given up, and she went to asso-
ciate herself with two of her nieces in keeping house
for a boarding-school of young girls. Here her lively
manners and her gracious interest in the young made
her a universal favorite, though the cares she assumed
broke in upon those habits of solitude and study
which formed her delight. From the day that she
surrendered this independency of hers, she had never,
for more than a score of years, a home of her own,
but filled the trying position of an accessory in the
home of others. Leaving the boarding-school, she
became the helper of an invalid wife and mother in
the early nursing and rearing of a family of young
children, — an office which leaves no privacy and no
leisure. Her bed was always shared with some little
one ; her territories were exposed to the constant
inroads of little pattering feet ; and all the various
sicknesses and ailments of delicate childhood made
absorbing drafts upon her time.

270 The Chimney-CorneK

"After a while she left New England with the
brother to whose family she devoted herself The
failing health of the wife and mother left more and
more the charge of all things in her hands ; servants
were poor, and all the appliances of living had the
rawness and inconvenience which in those days at-
tended Western life. It became her fate to supply
all other people's defects and deficiencies. Wherever
a hand failed, there must her hand be. Whenever a
foot faltered, she must step into the ranks. She was
the one who thought for and cared for and toiled for
all, yet made never a claim that any one should care
for her.

" It was not till late in my life that I became
acquainted with the deep interior sacrifice, the con-
stant self-abnegation, which all her life involved. She
was born with a strong, vehement, impulsive nature,
— a nature both proud and sensitive, — a nature
whose tastes were passions, whose likings and whose
aversions were of the most intense and positive char-
acter. Devoted as she always seemed to the mere
practical and material, she had naturally a deep ro-
mance and enthusiasm of temperament which ex-
ceeded all that can be written in novels. It was
chiefly owing to this that a home and a central affec-
tion of her own were never hers. In her early days
of attractiveness, none who would have sought her

The CathedraL

271

could meet, the high requirements of her ideahty ; she
never saw her hero, — and so never married. Family
cares, the tending of young children, she often con-
fessed, were peculiarly irksome to^ her. She had the
head of a student, a passionate love for the world
of books. A Protestant convent, where she might
devote herself without interruption to study, was her
ideal of happiness. She had, too, the keenest appre-
ciation of poetry, of music, of painting, and of natural
scenery. Her enjoyment in any of these things was
intensely vivid whenever, by chance, a stray sunbearnf'^
of the kind darted across the dusty path of her life ;
yet in all these her life was a constant repression.
The eagerness with which she would listen to any
account from those more fortunate ones who had
known these things, showed how ardent a passion v/as
constantly held in check. A short time before her
death, talking with a friend who had visited Switzer-
land, she said, with . great feeling : ' All my life my
desire to visit the beautiful places of this earth has
been so intense, that I cannot but hope that after my
death I shall be permitted to go and look at them.*
" The completeness of her self-discipline may be
gathered from the fact, that no child could ever be
brought to believe she had not a natural fondness for
children, or that she found the care of them burden-
some. It was easy to see that she had naturally all

%

2/2

The CJiimney-Corner,

A

those particular habits, those minute pertinacities in
respect to her daily movements and the arrangement
of all her belongings, which would make the med-
dling, intrusive demands of infancy and childhood
peculiarly hard for her -to meet. Yet never was there
a pair of toddling feet that did not make free with
Aunt Esther's room, never a curly head that did not
look up, in confiding assurance of a welcome smile,
to her bright eyes. The inconsiderate and never-
ceasing requirements of children and invalids never
ndrew from her other than a cheerful response ; and
to my mind there is more saintship in this than in the
private wearing of any number of hair-cloth shirts or
belts lined with spikes.

" In a large family of careless, noisy children there
will be constant losing of thimbles and needles and
scissors ; but Aunt Esther was always ready, without
reproach, to help the careless and the luckless. Her
things, so well kept and so freasured, she was willing
to lend, with many a caution and injunction it is true,
but also with a relish of right good-will. And, to do
us justice, we generally felt the sacredness of the
trust,- and were more careful of her things than of our
own. If a shade of sewing-silk were wanting, or a
choice button, or a bit of braid or tape. Aunt Esther
cheerfully volunteered something from her well-kept
stores, not regarding the trouble she made herself in

The Cathedral.

273

seeking the key, unlocking the drawer, and searching
out in bag or parcel just the treasure demanded.
Never was more perfect precision, or more perfect
readiness to accommodate others, .

Her little income, scarcely reaching a hundred
dollars yearly, was disposed of with a generosity
worthy a fortune. One tenth was sacredly devoted
to charity, and a still further sum laid by every year
for presents to friends. No Christmas or New Year
ever came round that Aunt Esther, out of this very
tiny fund, did not find something for children and
servants. Her gifts were trifling in value, but well
timed, — a ball of thread-wax, a paper of pins, a
pincushion, — something generally so well chosen as
to show that she had been running over our needs,
and noting what to give. She was no less gracious
as* receiver than as giver. The little articles that we
made for her, or the small presents that we could buy
out of our childish resources, she always declared
were exactly what she needed j and she delighted us
by the care she took of them and the value she set
upon them.

" Her incomeVas a source of the greatest pleasure
to her, as maintaining an independence without which
she could not have been happy. Though she con-
stantly gave, to every family in which she lived, ser^
vices which no money could repay, it would have

12* R

274

The Chimney-Corner,

been the greatest trial to her not to be able to provide
for herself. Her dress, always that of a true gentle-
woman,— refined, quiet, and neat, — was bought from
this restricted sum, and her small travelling expenses
were paid out of it. She abhorred anything false or
flashy : her caps were trimmed with real thread-lace,
and her silk dresses were o/ the best quality, perfectly
well made and kept; and, after all, a little sum al-
ways remained over in her hands for unforeseen exi-
gencies.

" This love of independence was one of the strong-
est features of her life, and we often playfully told her
that her only form of selfishness was the monopoly
of saintship, — that she who gave so much was not
willing to allow others to give to her, - — that she who
made herself .servant of all was not willing to allow
others to serve her.

"Among the trials of her life m.ust be reckoned
much ill-health; borne, however, with such heroic
patience that it was not easy to say when the hand
of pain was laid upon her. She inherited, too, a
tendency to depression of spirits, which at times
increased to a morbid and distressing gloom. Few
knew or suspected these sufferings, so completely
had she learned to suppress every outward manifes-
tation that might interfere with the happiness of
others. In her hours of depression she resolutely

The Cathedral,

275

forbore to sadden the lives of those around her with
her own melancholy, and often her darkest moods
were so lighted up and adorned with an outside show
of wit and humor, that those vyho had known her
intimately were astonished to hear that she had ever
been subject to depression.

" Her truthfulness of nature amounted almost to
superstition. From her promise once given she felt
no change of purpose could absolve her ; and there-
fore rarely would she give it absolutely, for she could
not alter the thing that had gone forth from her lips.
Our belief in the certainty of her fulfilling her word
was like our belief in the immutability of the laws of
nature. Whoever asked her got of her the absolute
truth on every subject, and, when she had no good
thing to say, her silence was often truly awful. When
anything mean or ungenerous was brought to her
knowledge, she would close her lips resolutely ; but
the flash in her eyes showed what she would speak
were" speech permitted. In her last days she spoke
to a friend of what she had suffered from the strength
of her personal antipathies. ^ I thank God,' she said,
^ that I believe at last I have overcome all that too,
and that there has not been, for some years, any
human being toward whom I have felt a movement
of dislike.'

" The last year of her life was a constant discipline

2/6 The Chimney-Corner,

of unceasing pain, borne with that fortitude which
could make her an entertaining and interesting com-
panion even while the sweat of mortal agony was
starting from her brow. Her own room she kept as
a last asylum, to which she would silently retreat
when the torture, became too intense for the repres-
sion of society, and there alone, with closed doors,
she wrestled with her agony. The stubborn indepen-
dence of her nature took refuge in this final fastness ;
and she prayed only that she might go down to death
with the full ability to steady herself all the way,
needing the help of no other hand.

" The ultimate struggle of earthly feeling came
when this proud self-reliance was forced to give way,
and she was obliged to leave herself helpless in the
hands of others. ^God requires that I should give
up my last form of self-will,' she said; 'now I have
resigned this^ perhaps he will let me go home.'

"In a good old age, Death, the friend, came and
opened the door of this mortal state, and a great soul,
that had served a long apprenticeship to little things,
went forth into the joy of its Lord ; a life of self-sacri-
fice and self-abnegation passed into a life of endless
rest."

" But," said Rudolph, " I rebel at this life of self-
abnegation and self-sacrifice. I do not think it the
duty of noble women, who have beautiful natures and

The Cathedral.

277

enlarged and cultivated tastes, to make themselves
the slaves of the sick-room and nursery."

" Such was not the teaching of our New England
faith," said I. " Absolute unselfishness, — the death
of self, — such were its teachings, and such as Esther's
the characters it made. * Do the duty nearest thee,*
was the only message it gave to * women with a mis-
sion ' ; and from duty to duty, from one self-denial to
another, they rose to a majesty of moral strength
impossible to any form of mere self-indulgence. It is
of souls thus sculptured and chiselled by self-denial
and self-discipline that the living temple of th'e perfect
hereafter is to be built. The pain of the discipline is
short, but the glory of the fruition is eternal."

XIL

THE NEW YEAR.
[1865.]

ERE comes the First of January, Eighteen

A A Hundred and Sixty-Five, and we are all settled
comfortably into our winter places, with our winter
surroundings and belongings ; all cracks and openings
are calked and listed, the double windows are in, the
furnace dragon in the cellar is ruddy and in good
liking, sending up his warming respirations through
every pipe and register in the house ; and yet, though
an artificial summer reigns everywhere, like bees, we
have our swarming-place, — in my library. There is
my chimney-corner, and my table permanently estab-
lished on one side of the hearth ; and each of the
female genus has, so to speak, pitched her own winter-
tent within sight of the blaze of my camp-fire. I
discerned to-day that Jennie had surreptitiously ap-
propriated one of the »drawers of my study-table to
knitting-needles and worsted ; and wicker work-bas-
kets and stands of various heights and sizes seem to

The New Year, 279

be planted here and there for permanence among the
bookcases. The canary-bird has a sunny window, and
the plants spread out their leaves and unfold their
blossoms as if there were no ice and snow in the
street, and Rover makes a hearth-rug of himself in
winking satisfaction in front of my fire, except when
Jennie is taken with a fit of discipline, when he beats
a retreat, and secretes himself under my table.

Peaceable, ah, how peaceable, home and quiet and
warmth in winter ! And how, when we hear the wind
whistle, we think of you, O our brave brothers, our
saviors and defenders, who for our sake have no
home but the muddy camp, the hard pillow of the
barrack, the weary march, the uncertain fare, — you,
the rank and file, the thousand unnoticed ones, who
have left warm fires, dear wives, loving little children,
without even the hope of glory or fame, — without
even the hope of doing anything remarkable or per-
ceptible for the cause you love, — resigned only to fill
the ditch or bridge the chasm over which your country
shall walk to peace and joy! Good men and true,
brave unknown hearts, we salute you, and feel that
we, in our soft peace and security, are not worthy of
you ! When we think of you, our simple comforts
seem luxuries all too good for us, who give so little
when you give all !

But there are others to whom from our bright homes,

280

The Chimney-Corner.

our cheerful firesides, we would fain say a word, if we
dared.

Think of a mother receiving a letter with such a
passage as this in it ! It is extracted from one we
have just seen, written by a private in the army of
Sheridan, describing the death of a private. " He
fell instantly, gave a peculiar smile and look, and then
closed his eyes. We laid him down gently at the foot
of a large tree. I crossed his hands over his breast,
closed his eyelids down, but the smile was still on his
face. I wrapt him in his tent, spread my pocket-
handkerchief over his face, wrote his name on a piece
of paper, and pinned it on his breast, and there we
left him : we could not find pick or shovel to dig a
grave." There it is ! — a history that is multiplying
itself by hundreds daily, the substance of what has
come to so many homes, and must come to so many
more before the great price of our ransom is paid !

What can we say to you, in those many, many
homes where the light has gone out forever ? — you, O
fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, haunted by a name
that has ceased to be spoken on earth, — you, for
whom there is no more news from the camp, no more
reading of lists, no more tracing of maps, no more
letters, but only a blank, dead silence ! The battle-
cry goes on, but for you it is passed by ! the victory
comes, but, oh, never more to bring him back to you !

The New Year,

28r

your offering to this great cause has been made, and
been taken ; you have thrown into it all your hving,
even all that you had, and from henceforth your house
is left unto you desolate ! O ye watchers of the cross,
ye waiters by the sepulchre, what can be said to you ?
We could almost extinguish our own home-fires, that
seem too bright when we think of your darkness ; the
laugh dies on our lip, the lamp burns dim through our
tears, and we seem scarcely worthy to speak words
of comfort, lest we seem as those who mock a grief
they cannot know.

But is there no consolation ? Is it nothing to have
had such a treasure to give, and to have given it freely
for the noblest cause for which ever battle was set, —
for the salvation of your country, for the freedom of .
all mankind ? Had he died a fruitless death, in the
track of common life, blasted by fever^ smitten or rent
by crushing accident, then might his most precious life
seem to be as water spilled upon the ground ; but now
it has been given for a cause and a purpose worthy
even the anguish of your loss and sacrifice. He has
been counted worthy to be numbered with those who
stood with precious incense between the living and
the- dead, that the plague which was consuming us
might be stayed. The blood of these young martyrs
shall be the seed of the future church of liberty, and
from eveiy drop shall spring up flowers of healing. O

282 The Chimney-Corner,

widow ! O mother ! blessed among bereaved women !
there remains to you a treasure that belongs not to
those who have lost in any other wise, — the power to
say, " He died for his country." In all the good that
comes of this anguish you shall have a right and share
by virtue of this sacrifice. The joy of freedmen burst-
ing from chains, the glory of a nation new-born, the
assurance of a triumphant future for your country and
the world, — all these become yours by the purchase-
money of that precious blood.

Besides this, there are other treasures that come
through sorrow, and sorrow alone. There are celes-
tial plants of root so long and so deep that the land
must be torn and furrowed, ploughed up from the
•very foundation, before they can strike and flourish ;
and when we see how God's plough is driving back-
ward and forward and across this nation, rending,
tearing up tender shoots, and burying soft wild-flowers,
we ask ourselves, What is He going to plant ?

Not the first year, nor the second, after the ground
has been broken up, does the purpose of the husband-
man appear. At first we see only what is uprooted
and ploughed in, — the daisy drabbled, and the violet
crushed, — and the first trees planted amid the un-
sightly furrows stand dumb and disconsolate, irreso-
lute in leaf, and without flower or fruit. Their work
is under the ground. In darkness and silence they

The Nezv Year,

283

are putting forth long fibres, searching hither and
thither under the black soil for the strength that years
hence shall burst into bloom and bearing.

What is true of nations is true of individuals. It
may seem now winter and desolation with you. Your
hearts have been ploughed and harrowed and are now
frozen up. There is not a flower left, not a blade of
grass, not a bird to sing, — and it is hard to believe
that any brighter flowers, any greener herbage, shall
spring up than those which have been torn away ; and
yet there will. Nature herself teaches you to-day.
Out-doors nothing but bare branches and shrouding
snow ; and yet you know that there is not a tree that
is not patiently holding out at the end of its boughs
next year's buds, frozen indeed, but unkilled. The
rhododendron and the lilac have their blossoms all
ready, wrapped in cere-cloth, waiting in patient faith.
Under the frozen ground the crocus and the hyacinth
and the tulip hide in their hearts the perfect forms of
future flowers. And it is even so with you : your leaf-
buds of the future are frozen, but not killed ; the soil
of your heart has many flowers under it cold and still
now, but they will yet come up and bloom.

The dear old book of comfort tells of no present
healing for sorrow. No chastening for the present
seemeth joyous, but grievous, but aftei^fards it yield-
eth peaceable fruits of righteousness. We, as indi-

284

The Chhnney-Corner,

viduals, as a nation, need to have faith in that after-
wards. It is sure to come, — sure as spring and
summer to follow winter.

There is a certain amount of suffering which must
follow the rending of the great cords of life, suffering
which is natural and inevitable ; it cannot be argued
down ; it cannot be stilled ; it can no more be soothed
by any effort of faith and reason than the pain of a
fractured limb, or the agony of fire on the living flesh.
All that we can do is to brace ourselves to bear it,
calling on God, as the martyrs did in the fire, and
resigning ourselves to let it burn on. We must be
willing to suffer since God so wills. There are just
so many waves to go over us, just so many arrows of
Stinging thought to be shot into our soul, just so many
faintings and sinkings and revivings only to suffer
again, belonging to and inherent in our portion of
sorrow ; and there is a work of healing that God has
placed in the hands of Time alone.

Time heals all things at last ; yet it depends much
on us in our suffering, whether time shall send us
forth healed, indeed, but maimed and crippled and
callous, or whether, looking to the great Physician
of sorrows, and co working with him, we come forth
stronger and fairer even for our wounds.

We call ourselves a Christian people, and the pecu-
liarity of Christianity is that it is a worship and doc-

The New Year.

285

trine of sorrow. The five wounds of Jesus, the instru-
ments of the passion, the cross, the sepulchre, —
these are its emblems and watchwords. In thousands
of churches, amid gold and gems and altars fragrant
with perfume, are seen the crown of thorns, the nails,
the spear, the cup of vinegar mingled with gall, the
sponge that could not slake that burning death-thirst ;
and in a voice choked with anguish the Church in
many lands and divers tongues prays from age to age,
" By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy cross and
passion, by thy precious death and burial ! " — mighty
words of comfort, whose meaning reveals itself only
to souls fainting in the cold death-sweat of mortal
anguish ! ' They tell all Christians that by uttermost
distress alone was the Captain of their salvation made
perfect as a Saviour.

Sorrow brings us into the true unity of the Church,
— that unity which underlies all external creeds, and
unites all hearts tha.t have suffered deeply enough to
know that when sorrow is at its utmost there is but
one kind of sorrow, and but one remedy. What mat-
ter, in extremis, whether we be called Romanist or

• , Si

Protestant, or Greek, or Calvinist ?

We suffer, and Christ suffered ; we die, and Christ
died ; he conquered suffering and death, he rose and
lives and reigns, — and we shall conquer, rise, live,
and reign. The hours on the cross were long, the

286 The Chimney-Comer.

thirst was bitter, the darkness and horror real, — hut
ihey ended. After the wail, My God, why hast thou
forsaken me ? came the calm, " It is finished ;
pledge to us all that our " It is finished " shall come
also.

Christ arose, fresh, joyous, no more to die ; and it
is written, that, when the disciples were gathered
together in fear and sorrow, he stood in the midst
of them, and showed unto them his hands and his
side ; and then were they glad. Already had the
healed wounds of Jesus become pledges of consola-
tion to innumerable thousands ; and those who, like
Christ, have suffered the weary struggles, the dim
horrors of the cross, — who have lain, like him, cold
and chilled in the hopeless sepulchre, — if his spirit
wakes them to life, shall come forth with healing
power for others who have suffered and are suffering.

Count the good and beautiful ministrations that
have been wrought in this world of need and labor,
and how many of them have been wrought by hands
wounded and scarred, by hearts that had scarcely
ceased to bleed !

How many priests of consolation is God now or-
daining by the fiery imposition of sorrow ! how many
Sisters of the Bleeding Heart, Daughters of Mercy,
Sisters of Charity, are receiving their first vocation in
tears and blood !

The New Year,' 287

The report of every battle strikes into some home ;
and heads fall low, and hearts are shattered, and only
God sees the joy that is set before them, and that
shall come out of their sorrow. IJe sees our morning
at the same moment that He sees our night, — sees
us comforted, healed, risen to a higher life, at the
same moment that He sees us crushed and broken in
the dust ; and so, though tenderer than we. He bears
our great sorrows fo^ tne joy that is set before us.

After the Napoleonic wars had desolated Europe,
the country was, like all countries after war, full of
shattered households, of widows and orphans and
homeless wanderers. A nobleman of Silesia, the
Baron von Kottwitz, who had lost his wife and all his
family in the reverses and sorrows of the times, found
himself alone in the world, which looked more dreary
and miserable through the multiplying lenses of his
own tears. But he was one of those whose heart had
been quickened in its death anguish by the resurrec-
tion voice of Christ ; and he came forth to life and
comfort. He bravely resolved to do all that one man
could to lessen the great sum of misery. He sold his
estates in Silesia, bought in Berlin a large building
that had been used as barracks for the soldiers, and,
fitting it up in plain, commodious apartments, formed
there a great family-establishmeht, into which he re-
ceived the wrecks and fragments of families that had

288 The Chim7iey-Comer.

been broken up by the war, — orphan children, wid-
owed and helpless women, decrepit old people, dis-
abled soldiers. These he made his family, and con-
stituted himself their father and chief. He abode
with them, and cared for them as a parent. He had
schools for the children ; the more advanced he put
to trades and employments ; he set up a hospital foi
the sick ; and for all he had the priestly ministrations
of his own Christ-like heart. The celebrated Profes-
sor Tholuck, one of the most learned men of modern
Germany, was an early protege of the old Baron's, who,
discerning his talents, put him in the way of a liberal
education. In his earlier years, like many others of
the young who play with life, ignorant of its needs,
Tholuck piqued himself on a lordly scepticism with
regard to the commonly received Christianity, and
even wrote an essay to prove the superiority of the
Mohammedan to the Christian religion. In speaking
of his conversion, he says, — " What moved me was
no argument, nor any spoken reproof, but simply that
divine image of the old Baron walking before my soul.
That life was an argument always present to me, and
which I never could answer; and so I became a
Christian." In the life of this man we see the victory
over sorrow. How many with means like his, when
desolated by like bereavements, have lain coldly and
idly gazing on the miseries of life, and weaving around

The New Year.

289

themselves icy tissues of doubt and despair, — doubt-
ing the being of a God, doubting the reality of a Prov-
idence, doubting the divine love, imbittered and rebel-
lious against the power which they could not resist,
yet to which they would not submit! In such a chill
heart-freeze lies the danger of sorrow. And it is a
mortal danger. It is a torpor that must be resisted,
as the man in the whirling snows must bestir himself,
or he will perish. The apathy of melancholy must be
broken by an effort of religion and duty. The stag-
nant blood must be made to flow by active work, and
the cold hand warmed by clasping the hands out-
stretched towards it in sympathy or supplication.
One orphan child taken in, to be fed, clothed, and
nurtured, may save a heart from freezing to death :
and God knows this war is making but too many
orphans !

It is easy to subscribe to an orphan asylum, and go
on in one's despair aad loneliness. Such ministries
may do good to the children who are thereby saved
from the street, but they impart little warmth and
comfort to the giver. One destitute child housed,
taught, cared for, and tended personally, will bring
more solace to a suffering heart than a dozen main
tained in an asylum. Not that the child will prob
ably prove an angel, or even an uncommonly inter-
esting mortal. It is a prosaic work, this bringing-up
13 s

290 The Chimney-Corner,

of children, and there can be little rosewater in it.
The child may not appreciate what is done for him,
may not be particularly grateful, may have disagree-
able faults, and continue to have them after much
pains on your part to eradicate them, — and yet it is
a fact, that to redeem one human being from destitu-
tion and ruin, even in some homely every-day course
of ministrations, is one of the best possible tonics
and alteratives to a sick and wounded spirit.

But this is not the only avenue to beneficence which
the war opens. We need but name the service of
hospitals, the care and education of the freedmen, —
for these are charities that have long been before the
eyes of the community, and have employed thousands
of busy hands : thousands of sick and dying beds to
tend, a race to be educated, civilized, and Christian-
ized, surely were work enough for one age j and yet
this is not all. War shatters everything, and it -is hard
to say what in society will not need rebuilding and
binding up and strengthening anew. Not the least
^of the evils of war are the vices which a great army
engenders wherever it moves, — vices peculiar to mili-
tary life, as others are peculiar to peace. The poor
soldier perils for us not merely his body, but his soul.
He leads a life of harassing and exhausting toil and
privation, of violent strain on the nervous energies,
alternating with sudden collapse, creating a craving

The New Year,

. 291

for stimulants, and endangering the formation of fatal
habits. What furies and harpies are those that follow
the army, and that seek out the soldier in his tent, far
from home, mother, wife, and sister, tired, disheart-
ened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a mo-
mentary exhilaration, that burns oftly to chill and to
destroy ! Evil angels are always active and indefati-
gable, and there must be good angels enlisted to face
them ; and here is employment for the slack hand of
grief. Ah, we have known mothers bereft of sons in
this war, who have seemed at once to open wide their
hearts, and to become mothers to every brave soldier
in the field. They have lived only to work, — and in
place of one lost, their sons have been counted by
thousands.

And not least of all the fields for exertion and
Christian charity opened by this war is that presented
by womanhood. The war is abstracting from the
community its protecting and sheltering elements, and
leaving the helpless and dependent in vast dispropor-
tion. For years to come, the average of lone women
will be largely increased ; and the demand, always
great, for some means by which they may provide for
themselves, in the rude jostle of the world, will be-
come more urgent and imperative.

Will any one sit pining away in inert grief, when
two streets off are the midnight dance-houses, where

292

The ChUmiey-Corner.

girls of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen are being lured
into the way of swift destruction ? How many of
these are daughters of soldiers who have given their
hearts' blood for us and our liberties !

Two noble women of the Society of Friends have
lately been taking the gauge of suffering and misery
in our land, visiting the hospitals art every accessible
point, pausing in our great cities, and going in their
purity to those midnight orgies where mere children
are being trained for a life of vice and infamy. They
have talked with these poor bewildered souls, en-
tangled in toils as terrible and inexorable as those of
the slave-market, and many of whom are frightened
and distressed at the Hfe they are beginning to lead,
and earnestly looking for the means of escape. In
the judgment of these holy women, at least one third
of those with whom they have talked are children so
recently entrapped, and so capable of reformation,
that there would be the greatest hope in efforts for
their salvation. While such things are to be done in
our land, is there any reason why any one should die
of grief? One soul redeemed will do more to lift the
burden of sorrow than all the blandishments and di-
versions of art, all the alleviations of luxury, all the
sympathy of friends.

In the Roman Catholic Church there is an order
of women called the Sisters of the Good Shepherd,

The New Year,

293

who have renounced the world to devote themselves,
their talents and property, entirely to the work of
seeking out and saving the fallen of their own sex j
and the wonders worked by their self-denying love on
the hearts and lives of even the most depraved are
credible only to those who know that the Good Shep-
herd Himself ever lives and works with such spirits
engaged in such a work. A similar order of women
exists in New York, under the direction of the Epis-
copal Church, in connection with St. Luke's Hospital;
and another in England, who tend the " House of
Mercy " of Clewer.

Such benevolent associations offer objects of inter-
est to that class which most needs something to fill
the void made by bereavement. The wounds of grief
are less apt to find a cure in that rank of life where
the sufferer has wealth and leisure. The poor widow,
whose husband was her all, must break the paralysis of
grief The hard necessities of life are her physicians ;
they send her out to unwelcome, yet friendly toil,
which, hard as it seems, has yet its healing power.
But the sufierer surrounded by the appliances of
wealth and luxury may long indulge the baleful apathy,
and remain in the damp shadows of the valley of
death till strength and health are irrecoverably lost.
How Christ-like is the thought of a woman, gracef\jl,
elegant, cultivated, refined, whose voice has been

294 '^^^^ Chimney-Corner,

trained to melody, whose fingers can make sweet har-
mony with every touch, whose pencil and whose nee-
dle can awake the beautiful creations of art, devoting
all these powers to the work of charming back to the
sheepfold those wandering and bewildered lambs
whom the Good Shepherd still calls his own ! Jenny
Lind, once, when she sang at a concert for destitute
children, exclaimed in her enthusiasm, " Is it not
beautiful that I can sing so ? " And so may not every
woman feel, when her graces and accomplishments
draw the wanderer, and charm away evil demons, and
soothe the sore and sickened spirit, and make the
Christian fold more attractive than the dizzy gardens
of false pleasure ?

In such associations, and others of kindred nature,
how many of the stricken and bereaved women of our
country might find at once a home and an object in
life ! Motherless hearts might be made glad in a
better and higher motherhood ; and the stock of
earthly life that seemed cut off at the root, and dead
past recovery, may be grafted upon with a shoot from
the tree of life which is in the Paradise of God.

So the beginning of this eventful 1865, which finds
us still treading the wine-press of our great conflict,
should bring with it a serene and solemn hope, a joy
such as those had with whom in the midst of the fi.ery
furnace there walked one like unto the Son of God.

Tlie New Year,

29s

The great affliction that has come upon our country
is so evidently the purifying chastening of a Father,
rather than the avenging anger of a Destroyer, that all
hearts may submit themselves in .a solemn and holy
calm still to bear the burning that shall make us clean
from dross and bring us forth to a higher national life.
Never, in the whole course of our history, have such
teachings of the pure abstract Right been so com-
mended and forced upon us by Providence. Never
have public men been so constrained to humble them-
selves before God, and to acknowledge that there is a
Judge that ruleth in the earth. Verily his inquisition
for blood has been strict and awful ; and for every
stricken household of the poor and lowly hundreds
of households of the oppressor have been scattered.
The land where the family of the slave was first
annihilated, and the negro, with all the loves and
hopes of a man, was proclaimed to be a beast to be
bred and sold in market with the horse and the swine,
— that land, with its fair name, Virginia, has been
made a desolation so signal, so wonderful, that the
blindest passer-by cannot but ask for what sin so aw-
ful a doom has been meted out. The prophetic vis-
ions of Nat Turner, who saw the leaves prop blood
and the land darkened, have been fulfilled. The
work of justice which he predicted is being executed
to the uttermost.

296 The Chiimtey-Corner,

But when this strange work of judgment and justice
is consummated, when our country, through a thou-
sand battles and ten thousands of precious deaths,
shall have come forth from this long agony, redeemed
and regenerated, then God himself shall return and
dwell with us, and the Lord God shall wipe away all
tears from all faces, and the rebuke of his people
shall he utterly take away.

XIIL

THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS.
7 HEN the first number of the Chimney-Corner

^ * appeared, the snow lay white on the ground,
the buds on the trees were closed and frozen, and be-
neath the hard frost-bound soil lay buried the last
year's flower-roots, waiting for a resurrection.

So in our hearts it was winter, — a winter of patient
suffering and expectancy, — a winter of suppressed
sobs, of inward bleedings, — a cold, choked, com-
pressed anguish of endurance, for how long and how
much God only could tell us.

The first paper of the Chimney-Gorner, as was most
meet and fitting, was given to those homes made
sacred and venerable by the cross of martyrdom, —
by the chrism of a great sorrow. That Ghimney-Gor-
ner made bright by home firelight seemed a fitting
place for a solemn act of reverent sympathy for the
homes by whose darkness our homes had been pre-
served bright, by whose emptiness our homes had

13*

298

The Chimney-Corner,

been kept full, by whose losses our homes had been
enriched ; and so we ventured with trembling to utter
these words of sympathy and cheer to those whom
God had chosen to this great sacrifice of sorrow.

The winter months passed with silent footsteps,
spring returned, and the sun, with ever-waxing power,
unsealed the snowy sepulchre of buds and leaves, —
birds reappeared, brooks were unchained, flowers
filled every desolate dell with blossoms and perfume.
And with returning spring, in like manner, the chill
frost of our fears and of our dangers melted before the
breath of the Lord. The great war, which lay like a
mountain of ice upon our hearts, suddenly dissolved
and was gone. The fears of the past were as a
dream when one awaketh, and now we scarce realize
our deliverance. A thousand hopes are springing up
everywhere, like spring-flowers in the forest. - All is
hopefulness, all is bewildering joy.

But this our joy has been ordained to be changed
into a wail of sorrow. The kind hard hand, that held
the helm so steadily in the desperate tossings of the
storm, has been stricken down just as we entered
port, — the fatherly heart that bore all our sorrows
can take no earthly part in our joys. His w^ere the
cares, the watchings, the toils, the agonies, of a nation
in mortal struggle ; and God, looking down, was so
well pleased with his humble faithfulness, his patient

The Noble Army of Martyrs, 299

continuance in well-doing, that earthly rewards and
honors seemed all too poor for him, so he reached
down and took him to immortal glories. " Well done,
good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of
thy Lord!"

Henceforth the place of Abraham Lincoln is first
among that noble army of martyrs who have given
their blood to the cause of human freedom. The eyes
are yet too dim with tears that would seek calmly to
trace out his place in history. He has been a marvel
and a phenomenon among statesmen, a new kind of
ruler in the earth. There has been something even
unearthly about his extreme unselfishness, his utter
want of personal ambition, personal self-valuation,
personal feeling.

The most unsparing criticism, denunciation, and
ridicule never moved him to a single bitter expres-
sion, never seemed to awaken in him a single bitter
thought. The most- exultant hour of party victory
brought no exultation to him ; he accepted power not
as an honor, but as a responsibility ; and when, after
a severe struggle, that power came a second time into
his hands, there was something preternatural in the
calmness of his acceptance of it. The first impulse
seemed to be a disclaimer of all triumph over the
party that had strained their utmost to push him from
his seat, and then a sober girding up of his loins to go

300

The Chimney-Corner,

on with the work to which he was appointed. His
last inaugural was characterized by a tone so peculiar-
ly solemn and free from earthly passion, that it seems
to us now, who look back on it in the light of what
has followed, as if his "soul had already parted from
earthly things, and felt the powers of the world to
come. It was not the formal state-paper of the chief
of a party in an hour of victory, so much as the sol-
emn soliloquy of a great soul reviewing its course
under a vast responsibility, and appealing from all
earthly judgments to the tribunal of Infinite Justice.
It was the solemn clearing of his soul for the great
sacrament of Death, and the words that he quoted in
it with such thrilling power were those of the adoring
spirits that veil their faces before the throne : "Just
and true are thy ways, thou King of saints ! "

Among the rich treasures which this bitter struggle
has brought to our country, not the least is the moral
wealth which has come to us in the memory of our
martyrs. Thousands, of men, women, and children
too, in this great conflict, have " endured tortures,
not accepting deliverance," counting not their lives
dear unto them in the holy cause ; and they have
done this as understandingly and thoughtfully as the
first Christians who sealed their witness with their
blood.

Let us in our hour of deliverance and victory re-

The Noble Anny of Martyrs, 301

cord the solemn vow, that our right hand shall forget
her cunning before we forget them and their suffer-
ings, — that our tongue shall cleave to the roof of our
mouth if we remember them not above our chief joy.

Least suffering among that noble band were those
who laid down their lives on the battle-field, to whom
was given a brief and speedy passage to the victor's
meed. The mourners who mourn for such as these
must give place to another and more august band,
who have sounded lower deeps of anguish, and
drained bitterer drops out of our great cup of trem-
bling.

The narrative of the lingering tortures, indignities,
and sufferings of our soldiers in Rebel prisons has
been something so harrowing that we have not dared
to dwell upon it. We have been helplessly dumb
before it, and have turned away our eyes from what
we could not relieve, and therefore could not endure
to look upon. But now, when the nation is called to
strike the great and solemn balance of justice, and to
decide measures of final retribution, it behooves us all
that we should at least watch with our brethren for
one hour, and take into our account what they have
been made to suffer for us.

Sterne said he could realize the miseries of captiv-
ity only by setting before him the image of a misera-
ble captive with hollow cheek and wasted eye, notch-

302

The Chimney-Corner,

ing upon a stick, day after day, the weary record of
the flight of time. So we can form a more vivid
picture of the sufferings of our martyrs from one
simple story than from any general description ; and
therefore we will speak right on, and tell one story
which might stand as a specimen of what has been
done and suffered by thousands.

In the town of Andover, Massachusetts, a boy of
sixteen, named Walter Raymond, enlisted among our
volunteers. He was under the prescribed age, but
his eager zeal led him to follow the footsteps of an
elder brother who had already enlisted ; and the fa-
ther of the boy, though these two were all the sons
he had, instead of availing himself of his legal right to
withdraw him, indorsed the act in the following letter
addressed to his Captain : —

"Andover, Mass., August 15, 1862.
" Captain Hunt, — My eldest son has enlisted in
your company. I send you his younger brother.
He is, and always has been, in perfect health, of
more than the ordinary power of endurance, honest,
truthful, and courageous. I doubt not you will find
him on trial all you can ask, except his age, and that
I am sorry to say is only sixteen ; yet if our country
needs his service, take him.

" Your obedient servant,

"Samuel Raymoi^."

The Noble Army of Martyrs, 303

The boy went forth to real service, and to succes-
sive battles at Kingston, at Whitehall, and at Golds-
borough ; and in all did his duty bravely and faith-
fully. He met the temptations and dangers of a sol-
dier's life with the pure-hearted firmness of a Chris-
tian child, neither afraid nor ashamed to remember
his baptismal vows, his Sunday-school teachings, and
his mother's wishes.

He had passed his promise to his mother against
drinking and smoking, and held it with a simple,
childlike steadiness. When in the midst of malarious
swamps, physicians and officers advised the use of
tobacco. The boy writes to his mother : " A great
many have begun to smoke, but I shall not do it
without your permission, though I think it does a
great deal of good."

In his leisure hours, he was found in his tent read-
ing ; and before battle he prepared his soul with the
beautiful psalms and collects for the day, as appoint-
ed by his church, and writes with simplicity to his
friends, —

" I prayed God that he would watch over me, and
if I fell, receive my soul in heaven ; and I also prayed
that I might not forget the cause I was fighting for,
and turn my back in fear."

After nine months' service, he returned with
a soldier's experience, though with a frame weak-

304 The C/iiinney-Corner,

ened by sickness in a malarious region. But no
sooner did health and strength return than he again
enlisted, in the Massachusetts cavalry service, and
passed many months of constant activity and adven-
ture, being in some severe skirmishes and battles
with that portion of Sheridan's troops who approached
nearest to Richmond, getting within a mile and a half
of the city. At the close of this raid, so hard had
been the service, that only thirty horses were left out
of seventy-four in his company, and Walter and two
others were the sole survivors among eight who
occupied the same tent.

On the 1 6th of August, Walter was taken prisoner
in a skirmish ; and from the time that this news
reached his parents, until the i8th of the following
March, they could ascertain nothing of his fate. A
general exchange of prisoners having been then ef-
fected, they learned that he had died on Christmas
Day in Salisbury Prison, of hardship and privation.

What these hardships were is, alas ! easy to be
kno.wn from those too well-authenticated accounts
published by our government of the treatment ex-
perienced by our soldiers in the Rebel prisons.

Robbed of clothing, of money, of the soldier's best
friend, his sheltering blanket, — herded in shivering
nakedness on the bare ground, — deprived of every
implement by which men of energy and spirit had

The Noble Army of Martyrs, 305

soon bettered their lot, — forbidden to cut in adjacent
forests branches for shelter, or fuel to cook their
coarse food, — fed on a pint of corn-and-cob-meal
per day, with some slight addition of molasses or
rancid meat, — denied all mental resources, all letters
from home, all writing to friends, - — these men were
cut off from the land of the living while yet they lived,
— they were made to dwell in darkness as those that
have been long dead.

By such slow, lingering tortures, — such weary,
wasting anguish and sickness of body and soul, — it
was the infernal policy of the Rebel government either
to wring from them an abjuration of their country,
or by slow and steady draining away of the vital
forces to render them forever unfit to serve in her
armies.

Walter's constitution bore four months of this usage,
when death came to his release. A fellow-sufterer,
who was with him in his last hours, brought the ac-
count to his parents.

Through all his terrible privations, even the linger-
ing pains of slow starvation, Walter preserved his
steady simplicity, his faith in God, and unswerving
fidelity to the cause for which he was suffering.

When the Rebels had kept the prisoners fasting for
days, and then brought in delicacies to tempt their
appetite, hoping thereby to induce them to desert

T

3o6

The Chimney-Corner,

their flag, he only answered, "I would rather be
carried out in that dead-cart ! "

When told by some that he must steal from his
fellow-sufferers, as many did, in' order to relieve the
pangs of hunger, he "answered, " No, I was not
brought up to that ! " And so when his weakened
system would no longer receive the cob-meal which
was his principal allowance, he set his face calmly
towards death.

He grew gradually weaker and weaker and fainter
and fainter, and at last disease of the lungs set in,
and it became apparent that the end was at hand.

On Christmas Day, while thousands among us were
bowing in our garlanded churches or surrounding fes-
tive tables, this young martyr lay on the cold, damp
ground, watched over by his destitute friends, who
sought to soothe his last hours with such scanty com-
forts as their utter poverty afforded, — raising his head
on the block of wood which was his only pillow, and
moistening his brow and lips with water, while his
life ebbed slowly away, until about two o'clock, when
he suddenly roused himself, stretched out his hand,
and, drawing to him his dearest friend among those
around him, said, in a strong, clear voice : —

I am going to die. Go tell my father I am read)'
to die, for I die for God and my country," — and,
looking up with a triumphant smile, he passed to the
reward of the faithful.

The Noble Army of Martyrs, 307

And now, men and brethren, if this story were a sin-
gle one, it were worthy to be had in remembrance;
but AValter Raymond is not the only noble-hearted boy
or man that has been slowly tortured and starved and
done to death, by the fiendish policy of Jefferson
Davis and Robert Edmund Lee. •

No, — wherever this simple history shall be read,
there will arise hundreds of men and women who will
testify, " Just so died my son ! " " So died my
brother ! " So died my husband ! "So died my
father !

The numbers who have died in these lingering tor-
tures are to be counted, not by hundreds, or even by
•thousands, but by tens of thousands.

And is there to be no retribution for a cruelty so
vast, so aggravated, so cowardly and base ? And if
there is retribution, on whose head should it fall ?
Shall we seize and hang the poor, ignorant, stupid,
imbruted semi-barbarians who were set as jailers to
keep these hells of torment and inflict these insults
and cruelties ? or shall we punish the educated, intel-
ligent chiefs who were the head and brain of the
iniquity ?

If General Lee had been determined not to have
prisoners starved or abused, does any one doubt that
he could have prevented these things ? Nobody
doubts it. His raiment is red with the blood of his

3o8

The Chimney-Comer,

helpless captives. Does any one doubt that JefFerson
Davis, living in ease and luxury in Richmond, knew
that men v^ere dying by inches in filth and squalor
and privation in the Libby Prison, within bowshot of
his own door ? Nobody doubts it. It was his will,
his deliberate policy, thus to destroy those who fell
into his hands. The chief of a so-called Confederacy,
who could calmly consider among his official docu-
ments incendiary plots for the secret destruction of
ships, hotels, and cities full of peaceable people, is a
chief well worthy to preside over such cruelties ; but
his only just title is President of Assassins, and the
whole civilized world should make common cause
against such a miscreant. *

There has been, on both sides of the water, much
weak, ill-advised talk of mercy and magnanimity to be
extended to these men, whose crimes have produced
a misery so vast and incalculable. The wretches
who have tortured the weak and the helpless, who
have secretly plotted to supplement, by dastardly
schemes of murder and arson, that strength which
failed them in fair fight, have been commiserated as
brave generals and unfortunate patriots, and efforts
are made to place them within the comities of war.

It is no feeling of personal vengeance, but a sense
of the eternal fitness of things, that makes us rejoice,
when criminals, who have so outraged every sentiment

The Noble Army of Martyrs, 309

of humanity, are arrested and arraigned and awarded
due retribution at the bar of their country's justice.
There are crimes against God and human nature which
it is treason ahke to God and man not to punish ;
and such have been the crimes of the traitors who
were banded together in Richmond:

If there be those whose hearts lean to pity, we can
show them where all the pity of their hearts may be
better bestowed than in deploring the woes of assas-
sins. Let them think of the thousands of fathers,
mothers, wives, sisters, whose lives will be forever
haunted with memories of the slow tortures in which
their best and bravest were done to death.

The sufferings of those brave men are ended.
Nearly a hundred thousand are sleeping in those sad,
nameless graves, — and may their rest be sweet !
" There the wicked cease from troubling, there the
weary are at rest. There the prisoners rest together ;
they hear not the voice of the oppressor." But, O ye
who have pity to spare, spare it for the broken-hearted
friends, who, to lifers end, will suffer over and over
all that their dear ones endured. Pity the mothers
who hear their sons' faint calls in dreams, who in
many a weary night-watch see thfei pining and wast-
ing, and yearn with a life-long, unappeasable yearning
to have been able to soothe those forsaken, lonely
death-beds. Oh, man or woman, if you have pity to

310

The Chhmiey-Corner,

spare, spend it not on Lee or Davis, — spend it on
their victims, on the thousands of living hearts which
these men of sin have doomed to an anguish that will
end only with life !

Blessed are the mothers whose sons passed in bat-
tle, — a quick, a painless, a glorious death ! Blessed
in comparison, — yet we weep for them. We rise up
and give place at sight of their mourning-garments.
We reverence the sanctity of their sorrow. But before
this other sorrow we are dumb in awful silence. We
find no words with which to console such grief. We
feel that our peace, our liberties, have been bought at
a fearful price, when we think of the sufferings of our
martyred soldiers. Let us think of them. It was for
us they bore hunger and cold and nakedness. They
might have had food and raiment and comforts, if
they would have deserted our cause, — and they did
not. Cut off from all communication with home or
friends or brethren, — dragging on the weary months,
apparently forgotten, — still they would not yield,
they would not fight against us ; and so for us at last
they died.

What return can we make them ? Peace has come,
and we take up all our blessings restored and bright-
ened ; but if w^e look, we shall see on every blessing
a bloody cross.

When three brave men broke through the ranks of

The Noble Army of Martyrs, 3 1 1

the enemy, to bring to King David a draught from
the home-well, for which he longed, the generous-
hearted prince would not drink it, but poured it out
as an offering before the Lord ; for he said, " Is not
this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of
their lives ?

Thousands of noble hearts have been slowly con-
sumed to secure to us the blessings we are rejoicing
in.

We owe a duty to these our martyrs, — the only
one we can pay.

In every place, honored by such a history and ex-
ample, let a monument be raised at the public ex-
pense, on which shall be inscribed the names of those
who died for their country, and the manner of their
death.

Such monuments will educate our young men in
heroic virtue, and keep alive to future ages the flame
of patriotism. And. thus, too, to the aching heart of
bereaved love shall be given the only consolation of
which its sorrows admit, in the reverence which is paid
to its lost loved ones.

THE END.

Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.

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